← catalogue

Art in England: Notes and Studies

by Dutton Cook · English · Gutenberg #20237 · 539,465 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Art in England: Notes and Studies
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Art in England: Notes and Studies

Author: Dutton Cook


        
Release date: December 31, 2006 [eBook #20237]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20237

Credits: E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Wilelmina Maillière, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ART IN ENGLAND: NOTES AND STUDIES ***


E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Wilelmina Maillière, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)



ART IN ENGLAND

Notes and Studies

by

DUTTON COOK.







London
Sampson Low, Son, and Arston
Milton House, Ludgate Hill.
1869.

Edinburgh: T. Constable,
Printer to the Queen, and to the University.




CONTENTS.

                                                PAGE
EARLY ART-SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND                       1
VERRIO AND LAGUERRE                               15
A SCULPTOR'S LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY             28
THE RISE OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY                     55
WIDOW HOGARTH AND HER LODGER                     104
ALLAN RAMSAY, JUNIOR                             123
GEORGE ROMNEY                                    142
COSWAY, THE MINIATURE-PAINTER                    175
THE STORY OF A SCENE-PAINTER                     201
THE STORY OF AN ENGRAVER                         230
SIR JOSHUA'S PUPIL                               244
HOPPNER AND LAWRENCE                             260
THE PUPIL OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE                 295
TURNER AND RUSKIN                                316




PREFACE.


It will be readily understood that this little volume does not affect to
set forth anything like a formal history of the rise and progress of Art
in England. The fitting treatment of such a theme would need much more
space--not to mention other requirements--than I have here at command. I
have designed merely to submit in a manner that may, I trust, be
acceptable to the general reader, and not wholly without value to the
student, some few excerpts and chapters from the chronicles of the
nation's Art, with biographical studies of certain of its artists.

In this way I have felt myself bound so to select my materials as to
avoid more travelling over familiar ground than seemed absolutely
necessary. I have therefore assumed the reader's acquaintance with the
lives and achievements of the great leaders of native Art--Hogarth,
Reynolds, Gainsborough, for instance--and have forborne to occupy my
pages with directly rehearsing their famous memoirs. It seemed to me
desirable rather to call attention to the stories of artists who, though
less renowned, less prominent in popular estimation, were yet of mark in
their periods, and had distinct influence on the character and progress
of Art in England. Many of these artists were contemporaries, however,
and in dealing with their careers severally, it has hardly been possible
to escape repetition of the mention of incidents pertaining to the times
in which they conjointly 'flourished,'--to employ the favourite term of
Biographical Dictionaries. I must ask the reader's pardon if he should
find these repetitions intrusively frequent. But the papers herein
contained have, for the most part, already appeared in print, when it
was deemed advisable to make each as complete in itself as was
practicable. They are now reproduced after revision, and, in some cases,
considerable extension, but their original form cannot be wholly
suppressed or vitally interfered with. I can only hope that what was a
merit in their isolated state may not be accounted too grievous a defect
now that they come to be congregated.

Finally, I would suggest--referring with all due modesty to my own
efforts in this direction--that the lives and labours of our Art
worthies form wholesome as well as curious subjects for popular study. I
do not desire to set up the artist--merely in right of his professing
himself an artist--as peculiarly or romantically entitled to public
regard. But a nation's Art is, in truth, an important matter. To its
value and significance the community is more awake than was heretofore
the case, and what was once but the topic of a clique has become of very
general concern and interest. Sympathy with Art must necessarily with
more or less force extend to the professors and practisers of Art.
Surveying the past, one cannot but note that often patronage and public
favour have been strangely perverted--now cruelly withheld, now
recklessly bestowed. Here genius, or a measure of talent nearly
amounting to genius, has languished neglected and suffering--here
charlatanry has prospered triumphantly. Something of this kind may be
happening now amongst us, or may occur again by and by. Acquaintance
with the past history of native Art--its struggles, trials, troubles,
and successes--will surely prove of worth in considering its present and
future position and prospects. As some slight aid to the diffusion of
information on the subject, these otherwise unpretending pages are
respectfully submitted to the reader.

D.C.




EARLY ART SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND.


Charles the First appears to have been the first English Sovereign who
regarded art, not merely as an aid to the splendour of the throne, but
for its own sake. As Walpole says, 'Queen Elizabeth was avaricious with
pomp, James the First lavish with meanness.' To neither had the position
of the painter been a matter of the slightest concern. But from Charles
the First dates truly the dawn of a love of art in England, the proper
valuing of the artist-mind, and the first introduction into the country
of the greatest works of the continental masters.

At the present day a complaint is constantly arising, that artists are
found to be deficient in general education, while what may be called for
distinction's sake the educated classes are singularly wanting in
artistic knowledge. The Universities do not teach art;[1] the
Art-schools do not teach anything else. As a result, speaking generally,
the painters are without mental culture, the patrons are without
art-acquirements. (This supposes the patrons to be of the upper classes;
but of course at the present time a large share of art-patronage comes
from the rich middle or manufacturing classes, whose uninformed tastes
are even less likely to tend to the due appraisement and elevation of
art.) Mr. Ruskin, giving evidence before the commissioners inquiring
into the position of the Royal Academy (1863), says, 'The want of
education on the part of the upper classes in art, has been very much at
the bottom of the abuses which have crept into all systems of education
connected with it. If the upper classes could only be interested in it
by being led into it when young, a great improvement might be looked
for;' and the witness goes on to urge the expediency of appointing
professors of art at the Universities. Upon the question of infusing a
lay-element into the Royal Academy by the addition of non-professional
academicians, Mr. Ruskin takes occasion to observe:--'I think if you
educate our upper classes to take more interest in art, which implies of
course to know something about it, they might be most efficient members
of the Academy; but if you leave them, as you leave them now, to the
education which they get at Oxford and Cambridge, and give them the
sort of scorn which all the teaching there tends to give of art and
artists, the less they have to do with an Academy of Art the better.'

[1] The Slade Professorship, recently instituted, is a step towards
mending this matter, however.

It is somewhat curious after this to consider an attempt made by King
Charles the First, in the eleventh year of his reign, to supply these
admitted deficiencies of University instruction: to found an Academy in
which general and fine-art education should be combined.

A committee, consisting of the Duke of Buckingham and others, had been
appointed in the House of Lords for taking into consideration the state
of the public schools, and their method of instruction. What progress
was made by this committee is not known. One result of its labours,
however, was probably the establishment of the _Musæum Minervæ_, under
letters-patent from the king, at a house which Sir Francis Kynaston had
purchased, in Covent Garden, and furnished as an Academy. This was
appropriated for ever as a college for the education of nobles and
gentlemen, to be governed by a regent and professors, chosen by
'balloting-box,' who were made a body corporate, permitted to use a
common seal, and to possess goods and lands in mortmain. Kynaston, who
styled himself _Corporis Armiger_, and who had printed in 1635 a
translation into Latin verse of Chaucer's _Troilus and Cressida_, was
nominated the first regent of the Academy, and published in 1636 its
constitution and rules, addressed 'to the noble and generous
well-wishers to vertuous actions and learning.' The Academy--'justified
and approved by the wisdom of the King's most sacred Majesty and many of
the lords of his Majesty's most honourable privy council,'--its
constitution and discipline being ratified under the hands and seals of
the Right Honourable the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England and
the two Lord Chief Justices--professed to be founded 'according to the
laudable customs of other nations,' and for 'the bringing of virtue into
action and the theory of liberal arts into more frequent practice.' Its
aims were directed to the end that England might be as well furnished
for the virtuous education and discipline of her own natives as any
other nation of Europe; it being 'sufficiently known that the subjects
of his Majesty's dominions have naturally as noble minds and as able
bodies as any nation of the earth, and therefore deserve all
accommodation for the advancing of them, either in speculation or
action.' It was considered that a peculiar institution was required for
teaching those 'most useful accomplishments of a gentleman'--the
sciences of navigation, riding, fortification, architecture, painting,
etc., which, if taught, were yet not practised in the universities or
courts of law. Many of these sciences, it was admitted, were taught in
London, 'in dispersed places;' but it was convenient to reduce and unite
them in one certain place, and not to teach them perfunctorily and
rather for gain than for any other respect--desirable, too, that youth
should have, in a virtuous society, generous and fitting recreations as
might divert them from too much frequenting places of expense and of
greater inconvenience. The intention of the Academy was also to benefit
gentlemen going abroad, by giving them language and instruction, with
other ornaments of travel. 'There is no understanding man,' says the
prospectus or advertisement of the institution, 'but may resent how many
of our noblemen and young gentlemen travel into foreign countries before
they have any language or knowledge to make profit of their time abroad,
they not being any way able to get knowledge for want of language, nor
language for want of time; since going over so young, their years of
license commonly expire before they can obtain to sufficient ripeness of
understanding; which no nation is known to do but the English: for what
children of other nations come over to us before they are of able age
and ripeness?' Another inconvenience arising from the want of the
_Musæum Minervæ_ was stated to be the necessity many gentlemen were
under of sending their sons beyond seas for their education, 'where,
through change of climate and dyat, and for want of years of discretion,
they become more subject to sickness and immature death.'

It was required of gentlemen admitted into the _Musæum_ that they should
pay fees of at least £5 each, and should bring a testimonial of their
arms and gentry, and their coat armour, 'tricked on a table, to be
conserved in the museum.' There was to be a _Liber Nobilium_ always
kept, in which benefactors and their benefits were to be recorded,
beginning with King Charles, 'our first and royal benefactor;' and it
was provided that if any gentleman should have any natural experiment or
secret, and should communicate it to the _Musæum_ and upon trial it
should be found true and good, his name and experiment should be
recorded in _Liber Nobilium_ for a perpetual honour to him.

The regent was required to instruct personally, or to superintend
instruction in 'heraldry, blazon of coates and armes, practical
knowledge of deedes, and evidences, principles and processes of common
law, knowledge of antiquities, coynes, medalls, husbandry,' etc. The
Doctor of Philosophy and Physic was to read and profess physiology,
anatomy, or any other parts of physic. The Professor of Astronomy was to
teach astronomy, optics, navigation, and cosmography. Instruction in
arithmetic, analytical algebra, geometry, fortification, and
architecture, was to be given by the Professor of Geometry. A Professor
of Music was to impart skill in singing, and music to play upon organ,
lute, viol, etc. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and
High Dutch were to be taught by the Professor of Languages. In addition,
a Professor of Defence inculcated skill at all weapons and wrestling
(but not pugilism apparently), and ample instruction was to be afforded
in riding, dancing, and behaviour, painting, sculpture, and writing. A
preparatory school was also to be annexed for the young gentlemen whose
parents were desirous of having them brought up in the _Musæum_ from
their first years. Finally, it was expressly provided that no degrees
were to be given, and the Academy was not to be conceived in any way
prejudicial 'to the Universities and Inns of Court, whose foundations
have so long and so honourably been confirmed.'

For no long time did the _Musæum Minervæ_ flourish. The King's troubles
began; and in the storms of civil war the Academy for teaching the upper
classes science and the fine arts, manners and accomplishments, fell to
the ground and disappeared utterly. So bitter and inveterate was the
feeling against the King, that, as Walpole says (and Walpole, be it
remembered, cherished no reverence for Charles the First--quite
otherwise--under a _facsimile_ of the warrant for the King's execution,
he wrote 'Magna Charta,' and he often found pleasure in considering the
monarch's fall), 'it seems to have become part of the religion of the
time to war on the arts because they had been countenanced at Court.' So
early as 1645, the Parliament had begun to sell the pictures at York
House. On the 23d July in that year votes were passed ordering the sale,
for the benefit of Ireland and the North, of all such pictures at York
House 'as were without any superstition.' Pictures containing
representations of the Second Person in the Trinity, or of the Virgin
Mary, were judged to be superstitious, and ordered to be burned
forthwith. Immediately after the King's death, votes were passed for the
sale of all his pictures, statues, jewels, hangings, and goods.
Cromwell, however, on his obtaining sole power, made some effort to stay
the terrible sacrifice that was being made of the royal collections.

There was thus an end of King Charles's _Musæum Minervæ_. Yet, if not
absolutely founded on its ruins, at any rate in some measure following
its example, we soon find record of the rise of a similar institution.
One Sir Balthazar Gerbier, without Government aid or countenance, but
acting entirely on his own responsibility, had opened an Academy 'on
Bednall-green without Aldgate.' This was probably in the year 1649.

Sir Balthazar Gerbier, architect and painter, 'excellent in either
branch,' says a biographer, had led a somewhat curious life. In a
pamphlet published in Paris, in 1646, addressed 'to all men that loves
Truth,'--singularly rich, thanks to the French printers, in blunders,
orthographic and grammatical,--Sir Balthazar gives some account of his
family and himself. He was born about 1591, at Middelburg in Zeeland,
the son of Anthoine Gerbier, a baron of Normandy, and Radegonde,
daughter-in-law to the Lord of Blavet in Picardy. 'It pleaseth God,'
writes Sir Balthazar, 'to suffer my parents to fly the bluddy
persecutions in France, against those which the Roman Catholics call
the Huguenots. My said parents left and lost all for that cause.' He
came to England when about twenty-one, and entered the service of George
Villiers, 'newly become favourite to King James, being immediately after
Baron, Viscount, Earle, and afterwards created Marquis and Duke of
Buckingham.' He accompanied Buckingham to Spain, and was employed in the
famous treaty of marriage, though ostensibly acting only as a painter.
While in Spain he executed a miniature portrait of the Infanta, which
was sent over to King James. The Duchess of Buckingham wrote to her
husband in Spain, 'I pray you, if you have any idle time, sit to Gerbier
for your picture, that I may have it well done in time.' After the
accession of Charles, it appears that Gerbier was employed in Flanders
to negotiate privately a treaty with Spain, in which Rubens was
commissioned to act on the part of the Infanta; the business ultimately
bringing the great painter to England. In 1628, Gerbier was knighted at
Hampton Court, and, according to his own account, was promised by King
Charles the office of Surveyor-General of the works after the death of
Inigo Jones. In 1637, he was employed at Brussels in some private state
negotiation with the Duke of Orleans, the French King's brother, and in
1641 he obtained a bill of naturalization, and took the oaths of
allegiance and supremacy. According to Vertue, he was much hated and
persecuted by the anti-monarchic party, for his loyalty and fidelity to
the King and his son. At the sale of the royal collection he made
purchases to the amount of £350. The suspension of all art-patronage
during the Commonwealth, probably necessitated the establishment of his
Academy at Bethnal Green, as a means of obtaining a livelihood. Painters
did not flourish very much under the rule of the Puritans.

A fly-sheet, undated, which may be found in the British Museum, sets
forth the plan of Gerbier's Academy. He addresses himself 'to all
Fathers of Noble Families and Lovers of Vertue,' desires public notice
of his great labours and exertions, and informs the world that 'the
chiefe Famous Forraigne Languages, Sciences, and Noble Exercises' are
taught in his establishment. 'All Lovers of Vertue,' of what age soever,
are received and instructed, and each of them may select such studies,
exercises, and sciences as are most consonant to his genius. Public
lectures are announced to be read gratis every Wednesday afternoon, in
the summer at three, in the winter at two o'clock. A competent number of
children of 'decayed families' are taught without fee. 'Lovers of
Vertue' are stated to be thus freed from the dangers and inconveniences
incident to travellers, who repair to foreign parts to improve
themselves, and leave the honour of their education to strangers,
running 'the hazzard of being shaken in the fundamental points of their
religion, and their innate loyalty to their native country.' The nation
is therefore exhorted to reflect seriously on Sir Balthazar's proffers;
to embrace them vigorously and constantly to countenance and promote
them, 'since that the languages declared to be taught in the Academy
are:--Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, High Dutch, and
Low Dutch, both Ancient and Modern Histories, jointly with the
Constitutions and Governments of the most famous Empires and Dominions
in the World, the true Natural and Experimental Philosophy, the
Mathematicks, Arithmetic and the Keeping of Bookes of Accounts by
Debitor and Creditor, all Excellent Handwriting, Geometry, Cosmography,
Geography, Perspective, Architecture, Secret Motions of Scenes,
Fortifications, the Besieging and Defending of Places, Fireworks,
Marches of Armies, Ordering of Battailes, Fencing, Vaulting, Riding the
Great Horse, Music, Playing on all sorts of Instruments, Dancing,
Drawing, Painting, Limning, and Carving,' etc. Certainly Sir Balthazar's
was a sufficient catalogue of arts, sciences, and accomplishments. The
lectures 'composed for the good of the public' were afterwards printed,
and to be obtained at Robert Ibbitson's house in Smithfield, near Hosier
Lane. It may be noted that a lecture upon the art of well-speaking,
brought upon the lecturer the derision of Butler, author of _Hudibras_.

In the winter the Academy was moved from Bethnal Green to Whitefriars.
Sir Balthazar issued advertisements as to his lectures. It is to be
feared his good intentions were not always appreciated by the public of
the day. In one of his advertisements we find him complaining bitterly
of 'the extraordinary concourse of unruly people who robbed him, and
treated with savage rudeness his extraordinary services.' Something of a
visionary, too, was Sir Balthazar;--yet, with all his vanity as to his
own merits--his coxcombry about his proceedings,--a sort of reformer and
benefactor also in a small way. At one time we find him advertising
that, besides lecturing gratis, he will lend from one shilling to six,
gratis, 'to such as are in extreme need, and have not wherewithal to
endeavour their subsistence, whereas week by week they may drive on some
trade.' By-and-by, however, Sir Balthazar was probably more disposed to
borrow than to lend. His Academy met with little support--with ridicule
rather than encouragement; was indeed a total failure; and he left
England for America. For some years nothing was heard of him.

In 1660, however, we find him publishing at Rotterdam 'a sommary
description, manifesting that greater profits are to be done in the hott
than in the cold parts of America.' This contains an account of his
journey with his family to settle at Surinam. But there, it seems, he
was seized by the Dutch, treated with much violence (one of his children
being killed), and brought to Holland. He attempted, but in vain, to
obtain redress from the States for this strange treatment of him. He
probably returned to England with Charles II., for he is said to have
aided in designing the triumphal arches erected at the Restoration.

Gerbier's name is attached to a long list of books and pamphlets. Some
of these are of a controversial character; the author was a stout
Huguenot, fond of denouncing the Pope; oftentimes alarmed at plots
against himself on account of his religion, and now publishing a letter
of remonstrance to his three daughters who, in opposition to his will,
had entered a nunnery in Paris. Other works relate to architecture and
fortifications, the languages, arts, and noble exercises taught in his
Academy, or contain advice to travellers, or deal with political
affairs. Mr. Pepys records in his diary, under date the 28th May
1663:--'At the Coffee House in Exchange Alley I bought a little book,
_Counsell to Builders_, by Sir Balth. Gerbier. It is dedicated almost to
all the men of any great condition in England, so that the dedications
are more than the book itself; and both it and them,' the diarist adds
somewhat severely, 'not worth a farthing!'

Sir Balthazar died in 1667, at Hempsted-Marshall House, which he had
himself designed, the seat of Lord Craven, and was buried in the chancel
of the adjoining church. Portraits of Gerbier were painted by
Dobson[2]--the picture was sold for £44 at the sale of Betterton the
actor--and by Vandyke. The work by Vandyke also contained portraits of
Gerbier's family, and was purchased in Holland by command of Frederick,
Prince of Wales, and brought to Leicester House.

[2] A portrait of Gerbier, Sir Charles Cotterel, and W. Dobson, painted
by Dobson, the property of the Duke of Northumberland, was exhibited at
South Kensington in 1868.

For something like half-a-century after Sir Balthazar Gerbier's time we
find no trace of another Art Academy in England.




VERRIO AND LAGUERRE.


Pope, denouncing the vanity of wealth and the crimes committed in the
name of taste, visits Lord Timon's villa, and finds plenty of pegs on
which to hang criticism--ample scope for satire. With depreciating eyes
he surveys the house and grounds, their fittings and garniture, almost
as though he were going to make a bid for them. 'He that blames would
buy,' says the proverb. Then he passes to the out-buildings, taking
notes like a broker in possession under a _fi. fa_.

    'And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,
    That summons you to all the pride of prayer:
    Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
    Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.
    On painted ceiling you devoutly stare,
    Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
    On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
    And bring all paradise before the eye,' etc.

Who was Verrio? Who was Laguerre?

ANTONIO VERRIO was born in Lecce, a town in the Neapolitan province of
Terra di Otranto, in the year 1639. Early in life he visited Venice to
study the colouring of the Venetian masters. He returned a successful,
not a meritorious painter. In 1660 he was at Naples, where he executed a
large fresco work, 'Christ healing the Sick,' for the Jesuit College.
This painting, we are told, was conspicuous for its brilliant colour and
forcible effect.

Subsequently the artist was in France, painting the high altar of the
Carmelites at Toulouse. Dominici says that 'Verrio had such a love for
travelling that he could not remain in his own country.'

Charles II., desiring to revive the manufacture of tapestry at Mortlake,
which had been stopped by the civil war, invited Verrio to England; but
when he arrived the king changed his plans, and intrusted the painter
with the decoration in fresco of Windsor Castle. Charles was induced to
this by seeing a work of Verrio's at Lord Arlington's house at the end
of St. James's Park, the site of Buckingham House. 'In possession of the
Cartoons of Raphael,' Fuseli lectured, angrily, on the subject, years
afterwards, 'and with the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, he
suffered Verrio to contaminate the walls of his palaces.' But there was
raging then a sort of epidemical belief in native deficiency and in the
absolute necessity of importing art talent. In his first picture Verrio
represented the king in a glorification of naval triumph. He decorated
most of the ceilings of the palace, one whole side of St. George's Hall
and the Chapel; but few of his works are now extant. Hans Jordaens'
lively fancy and ready pencil induced his critics to affirm of him,
'that his figures seemed to flow from his hand upon the canvas as from a
pot-ladle.' Certainly, from Verrio's fertility in apologue and allegory,
and the rapidity of his execution, it might have been said that he
spattered out his works with a mop. Nothing daunted him. He would have
covered an acre of ceiling with an acre of apotheosis. As Walpole
writes, 'His exuberant pencil was ready at pouring out gods, goddesses,
kings, emperors, and triumphs over those public surfaces on which the
eye never rests long enough to criticise, and where one should be sorry
to place the works of a better master. I mean ceilings and staircases.
The New Testament or the Roman History cost him nothing but ultramarine;
that and marble columns and marble steps he never spared.'

He shrunk from no absurdity or incongruity. His taste was even worse
than his workmanship. He delighted to avenge any wrong he had received,
or fancied he had received, by introducing his enemy, real or imaginary,
in his pictures. Thus, on the ceiling of St. George's Hall, he painted
Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, in the character of Faction dispersing
libels; in another place, having a private quarrel with Mrs. Marriott,
the housekeeper, he borrowed her face for one of his Furies. Painting
for Lord Exeter, at Burleigh, in a representation of Bacchus bestriding
a hogshead, he copied the head of a dean with whom he was at variance.
It is more excusable, perhaps, that, when compelled by his patron to
insert a Pope in a procession little flattering to his religion, he
added the portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury then living. In a
picture of the 'Healing of the Sick,' he was guilty of the folly and
impropriety of introducing among the spectators of the scene, portraits
of himself, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Mr. May, surveyor of the works, all
adorned with the profuse periwigs of the period. But he could not
transfer to his pictures a decorum and a common sense that had no place
in his mind. Hence he loved to depict a garish and heterogeneous whirl
of saints and sinners, pan-pipes, periwigs, cherubim, silk stockings,
angels, small-swords, the naked and the clothed, goddesses,
violoncellos, stars, and garters. A Latin inscription in honour of the
painter and his paintings appeared over the tribune at the end of St.
George's Hall:--'_Antonius Verrio Neapolitanus non ignobili stirpe
natus, ad honorem Dei, Augustissimi Regis Caroli Secundi et Sancti
Georgii, molem hanc felicissimâ manu decoravit_.'

The king lavished kindness upon this pretentious and absurd Italian. He
was appointed to the place of master-gardener, and lodgings in a house
in St. James's Park, to be afterwards known as Carlton House, were set
apart for his use. Here he was visited by Evelyn, who records that 'the
famous Italian painter' was 'settled in His Majesty's garden at St.
James's, which he had made a very delicious paradise.' The artist also
dined with the author, and was regaled with 'China oranges off my own
trees, as good, I think, as ever were eaten.' For works executed in
Windsor Castle between the years 1676 and 1681, he received the sum of
£6845, 8s. 4d. Vertue copied the account 'from a half-sheet of paper
fairly writ in a hand of the time.' It particularizes the rooms
decorated, and the cost. For the king's guard chamber, £300; for the
king's presence chamber, £200; for the queen's drawing-room, £250; for
the queen's bed-chamber, £100; and so on, until the enormous total is
reached. Of his paintings in St. George's Hall Evelyn writes, 'Verrio's
invention is admirable, his ordnance full and flowing, antique and
heroical; his figures move; and if the walls hold (which is the only
doubt, by reason of the salts, which in time and in this moist climate
prejudice), his work will preserve his name to ages.' He employed many
workmen under him, was of extravagant habits, and kept a great table. He
considered himself as an art-monarch entitled to considerable state and
magnificence. He was constant in his applications to the Crown for money
to carry on his works. With the ordinary pertinacity of the dun, he
joined a freedom which would have been remarkable, if the king's
indulgence and good humour had not done so much to foster it. Once, at
Hampton Court, having lately received an advance of a thousand pounds,
he found the king so encircled by courtiers that he could not approach.
He called out loudly and boldly--

'Sire! I desire the favour of speaking to your Majesty.'

'Well, Verrio,' the king inquired, 'what is your request?'

'Money, sire! I am so short in cash that I am not able to pay my
workmen, and your Majesty and I have learned by experience that pedlars
and painters cannot give credit long.'

The king laughed at this impudent speech, and reminded the painter that
he had but lately received a thousand pounds.

'Yes, sire,' persisted Verrio, 'but that was soon paid away.'

'At that rate, you would spend more than I do to maintain my family.'

'True, sire,' answered the painter; 'but does your Majesty keep an open
table as I do?'

Verrio designed the large equestrian portrait of the king for the hall
of Chelsea College, but it was finished by Cooke, and presented by Lord
Ranelagh. On the accession of James II. he was again employed at Windsor
in Wolsey's tomb-house, which it was intended should be used as a Roman
Catholic chapel. He painted the king and several of his courtiers in
the hospital of Christchurch, London, and he painted also at St.
Bartholomew's Hospital.

But soon there was an end of his friends and patrons, the Stuarts. James
had fled; William of Orange was on the throne; a revolution had happened
little favourable to Signor Verrio's religion or political principles.
There is a commendable staunchness in his adherence to the ruined cause:
in his abandoning his post of master-gardener, and his refusal to work
for the man he regarded as a usurper; though there is something
ludicrous in the notion of punishing King William by depriving him of
Verrio's art. He did not object, however, to work for the nobility. For
some years he was employed by Lord Exeter at Burleigh, and afterwards at
Chatsworth. He was true to his old execrable style. He introduced his
own portrait in a picture-history of Mars and Venus, and in the chapel
at Chatsworth he produced a dreadful altar-piece representing the
incredulity of St. Thomas. He painted also at Lowther Hall. For his
paintings at Burleigh alone he was paid more money than Raphael or
Michael Angelo received for all their works. Verrio was engaged on them
for about twelve years, handsomely maintained the while, with an
equipage at his disposal, and a salary of £1500 a year. Subsequently, on
the persuasion of Lord Exeter, Verrio was induced to lend his aid to
royalty once more, and he condescended to decorate the grand staircase
at Hampton Court for King William. Walpole suggests that he
accomplished this work as badly as he could, 'as if he had spoiled it
out of principle.' But this is not credible. The painting was in the
artist's usual manner, and neither better nor worse--and his best was
bad enough, in all conscience. His usual faults of gaudy colour, bad
drawing, and senseless composition were of course to be found; but then,
these were equally apparent in all his other works. Later in life his
sight began to fail him, and he received from Queen Anne a pension of
£200 a year for his life. To the last royal favour was extended to him,
and he was selected to superintend the decorations of Blenheim. But
death intervened. The over-rated, overpaid, and most meretricious
painter died at Hampton Court in 1707. There is evident error in
Dominici's statement that the old man met his death from drowning on a
visit to Languedoc. Walpole, summing up his merits and demerits, says,
rather curiously, 'He was an excellent painter for the sort of subjects
on which he was employed, without much invention and with less taste!'

The father of LOUIS LAGUERRE was by birth a Catalan, and held the
appointment of Keeper of the Royal Menagerie at Versailles. To his son,
born at Paris in 1663, Louis XIV. stood godfather, bestowing on the
child his distinguished Christian name. The young Laguerre received his
education at a Jesuit College, with the view of entering the priesthood,
but a confirmed impediment in his speech demonstrated his unfitness for
such a calling. He began to evince considerable art-ability, and, on the
recommendation of the fathers of the college, he eventually embraced the
profession of painting. He then entered the Royal Academy of France, and
studied for a short time under Charles Le Brun. In 1683 he came to
England with one Picard, a painter of architecture. At this time Verrio
was in the acme of his prosperity. He was producing allegorical ceilings
and staircases by wholesale. He had a troop of workmen under him,
obedient to his instructions, dabbing in superficial yards of pink
flesh, and furlongs of blue clouds. Verrio was happy to secure forthwith
so efficient an assistant as Laguerre, and soon found him plenty to do.
In nearly every work of Verrio's after this date, it is probable that
Laguerre had a hand. He seems to have been an amiable, kindly,
simple-minded man, without much self-assertion or any strong opinions of
his own. He was quite content to do as Verrio bid him, even imitating
him and following him through his figurative mysteries, and floundering
with him in the mire of graceless drawing and gaudy colour and
ridiculous fable. He had at least as much talent as his master--probably
even more. But he never sought to outshine or displace him.

'A modest, unintriguing man,' as Vertue calls him, he was quite
satisfied with being second in command, no matter how ignorant and
inefficient might be his captain.

John Tijon, his father-in-law, a founder of iron balustrades, said of
him, 'God has made him a painter, and there left him.'

He worked under Verrio in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and at Burleigh;
he executed staircases at old Devonshire House, in Piccadilly, at
Buckingham House, and at Petworth; assisted in the paintings at
Marlborough House, St. James's Park; decorated the saloon at Blenheim;
and in many of the apartments at Burleigh on the Hill 'the walls are
covered with his Cæsars.'

William of Orange gave the painter lodgings at Hampton Court, where it
seems he painted the Labours of Hercules in _chiaro-oscuro_, and
repaired Andrea Mantegna's pictures of the Triumphs of Julius Cæsar.

The commissioners for rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral unanimously chose
Laguerre to decorate the cupola with frescoes. Subsequently this
decision was abandoned in favour of Thornhill; but, as Walpole says,
'the preference was not ravished from Laguerre by superior merit.'

Sir James Thornhill received payment for his paintings in the dome of
St. Paul's at the rate of forty shillings the square yard. The world has
still the opportunity of deciding upon the merits or demerits of those
works. Vertue thinks that Sir James was indebted to Laguerre for his
knowledge of historical painting on ceilings, etc. For decorating the
staircase of the South Sea Company's House, Sir James received only
twenty-five shillings per square yard. By speculating in the shares of
the same Company, it may be stated that another artist, Sir Godfrey
Kneller, lost £20,000. But prosperous Sir Godfrey could afford to lose;
his fortune could sustain even such a shock as that; at his death he
left an estate of £2000 per annum. He had intended that Thornhill should
decorate the staircase of his seat at Wilton, but learning that Newton
was sitting to Sir James, he grew angry. 'No portrait painter shall
paint my house,' cried Sir Godfrey, and he gave the commission to
Laguerre, who did his very best for his brother artist.

On the union of England and Scotland, Laguerre received an order from
Queen Anne to design a set of tapestries commemorative of the event,
introducing portraits of her Majesty and her Ministers. He executed the
requisite drawings; but it does not appear that the work was ever
carried out.

In 1711 he was a director of an academy of drawing instituted in London,
under the presidency of Kneller. On the resignation of Kneller, there
was a probability of Laguerre being elected in his place; but he was
again defeated by his rival, Thornhill, probably as much from his own
want of management and self-confidence, as from any other cause.

He drew designs for engravers, and etched a Judgment of Midas. Round
the room of a tavern in Drury Lane, where was held a club of _virtuosi_,
he painted a Bacchanalian procession, and presented the house with his
labours.

He had many imitators; for there are followers of bad as well as of good
examples. Among others, Riario, Johnson, Brown, besides Lanscroon,
Scheffers, and Picard, who worked with him under Verrio.

His son and pupil, John Laguerre, manifested considerable ability, and
engraved a series of prints of 'Hob in the Well,'[3] which had a large
popularity, though they were but indifferently executed. He was fond of
the theatre, with a talent for music and singing; painted scenery and
stage decorations. He even appeared upon the boards as a singer.

[3] A favourite old ballad farce by Dogget, the comedian.

Laguerre, in his age, feeble and dropsical, attended Drury Lane on the
20th April 1721, to witness his son's performance in a musical version
of Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Island Princess;' but, before the curtain
rose, the poor old man was seized with an apoplectic fit, and died the
same night. He was buried in the Churchyard of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields. The son subsequently quitted the stage, and
resumed his first profession. He etched a plate, representing Falstaff,
Pistol, and Doll Tearsheet, with other theatrical characters, in
allusion to a quarrel between the players and patentees. He died in very
indigent circumstances, in March 1748.

Time and the white-washer's double-tie brush have combined to destroy
most of the ceilings and staircases of Signor Verrio and Monsieur
Laguerre. For their art, there was not worth enough in it to endow it
with any lasting vitality. They are remembered more from Pope's lines,
than on any other account--preserved in them, like uncomely curiosities
in good spirits. To resort to the poet for verses applicable, though
familiar:--

    'Pretty in amber to observe the forms
    Of hair, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms;
    The things we know are neither rich nor rare,
    But wonder how the devil they got there!'




A SCULPTOR'S LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY.


Horace Walpole, in his _Anecdotes of Painting_, having deplored the low
ebb to which the arts had sunk in Britain during the time of George the
First, proceeds to consider the succeeding reign with greater
complacency: accounting it, indeed, as a new and shining era. Under
George the Second he found architecture revived 'in antique purity;'
sculpture redeemed from reproach; the art of gardening, or, as he
prefers to call it, 'the art of creating landscape,' pressed forward to
perfection; engraving much elevated; and painting, if less perceptibly
advanced, still (towards the close of the reign, at any rate) ransomed
from insipidity by the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The king himself,
it was conceded, had 'little propensity to refined pleasure;' but his
consort, Queen Caroline, was credited with a lively anxiety to reward
merit and to encourage the exertions of the ingenious.

This glowing picture of the period in its relation to the fine arts,
contrasts somewhat violently with what we learn elsewhere concerning the
poverty of Richard Wilson, the ill-requited labours of William Hogarth,
the struggles and sufferings of James Barry, and generally, of the
depressed condition of native professors of art during the eighteenth
century. That the portrait-painter (the 'face-painter' as Hogarth
delighted contemptuously to designate him) found sufficient occupation
is likely enough; but, otherwise, the British artist had perforce to
limit the aspirations of his genius to the decoration of ceilings and
staircases, and to derive his chief emoluments from painting the
sign-boards of the British tradesman: if not a very dignified still a
remunerative employment; for in those days every London shop boasted its
distinct emblem.

Nevertheless it is certain that in George the Second's reign Fashion
began to take up with Taste. Dilettanteism became the vogue. Objects of
_virtù_ were now, for the first time, indispensable appendages of the
houses of the aristocratic and the rich. A rage for 'collecting'
possessed the town, and led to an expenditure as profuse as it was
injudicious. Of the vast sums disbursed, however, but a small share came
to the native artist. His works were passed over as beneath the notice
of the _cognoscenti_. The 'quality' gave their verdict against modern
art and in favour of the ancient masters. A race of old picture-brokers
and jobbers in antiquities sprang into existence to supply the
increasing demand for such chattels. The _London Magazine_ for 1737, in
an article attributed to William Hogarth, inveighs bitterly against
these speculators and their endeavours to depreciate every English work
in order to enhance the value of their imported shiploads of Dead
Christs, Holy Families and Madonnas: the sweepings of the continental
art-markets. Auction-rooms were opened in all parts of London for the
exhibition and sale of choice objects of every kind, and became the
resort and rendezvous of all pretending to wealth and fashion. Agents
were to be found at the chief foreign cities eagerly exhuming
antiquities for transmission to England: certain of immediate sale and
enormous profit there. The prevailing appetite seemed to grow by what it
fed on. And then, of course, unscrupulous people took to manufacturing
antiquities; and, so doing, drove a brisk and remarkably remunerative
trade.

The neglected British artist naturally made protests and wrote pamphlets
more or less angry in tone, according to the state of his purse and his
temper and the extent of his self-appreciation. The press of the period
raised its voice: a less portentous and sonorous organ than it has since
possessed. Even the players ventured to be satirical on the subject. It
was early in 1752 that Mr. Foote's comedy of _Taste_ was brought upon
the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, David Garrick both writing and
speaking the prologue. Probably the satire soared rather above the heads
of the audience. Foote admits as much in his preface to the published
play: 'I was always apprehensive that the subject of the following piece
was too abstracted and singular for the comprehension of a mixed
assembly. Juno, Lucina, Jupiter Tonans, Phidias, Praxiteles, with the
other gentlemen and ladies of antiquity, were, I daresay, utterly
unknown to my very good friends of the gallery; nor, to speak the truth,
do I believe they had many acquaintances in the other parts of the
house.' Accordingly _Taste_, on its first production, was only repeated
some four nights, and, though revived once or twice afterwards, never
took rank as a stock piece. Yet, as Mr. John Forster says of it, Foote's
play is legitimate satire, and also excellent comedy.

There is little or no plot. Foote did not care for continuous story; he
could generally secure the favour of the audience by the wit of his
dialogue and a quick succession of lively incidents. In the first act
Lady Pentweazle sits for her portrait in a broadly humorous scene. Puff
is an impudent trader in sham antiquities and objects of _virtù_;
Carmine, an artist constrained by poverty to aid and abet him in his
nefarious proceedings; Brush is another confederate. In the second act a
sale by auction is represented. Carmine appears as Canto the auctioneer;
Puff figures as the Baron de Groningen, who is travelling to purchase
pictures for the Elector of Bavaria. Lord Dupe, Bubble, Squander, and
Novice, are fashionable patrons and collectors of art. The pictures to
be submitted for sale are inspected. One of them is particularly
admired; but is ultimately discovered to be 'a modern performance, the
master alive, and an Englishman.' 'Oh, then,' says Lord Dupe, changing
his tone, 'I would not give it house-room!' The antiquities are then
brought forward. 'The first lot,' announces the auctioneer, 'consists of
a hand without an arm, the first joint of the forefinger gone, supposed
to be a limb of the Apollo Delphos. The second, half a foot, with the
toes entire, of the Juno Lucina. The third, the Caduceus of the
Mercurius Infernalis. The fourth, the half of the leg of the Infant
Hercules. All indisputable antiques, and of the Memphian marble.' One
critic objects to a swelling on the foot of Juno as a defect in its
proportion; but the auctioneer informs him that the swelling is intended
to represent a _corn_, and the defect is thereupon pronounced an
absolute master-stroke. Presently the auctioneer proceeds: 'Bring
forward the head from Herculaneum.... Now, gentlemen, here is a
jewel.... The very mutilations of this piece are worth all the most
perfect performances of modern artists. Now, gentlemen, here is a
touchstone for your taste!' He is asked whether the head is intended to
represent a man or a woman. 'The connoisseurs differ,' he answers. 'Some
will have it to be the Jupiter Tonans of Phidias, and others the Venus
of Paphos from Praxiteles; but I don't think it fierce enough for the
first, nor handsome enough for the last.... Therefore I am inclined to
join with Signor Julio de Pampedillo, who, in a treatise dedicated to
the King of the Two Sicilies, calls it the Serapis of the Egyptians, and
supposes it to have been fabricated about eleven hundred and three years
before the Mosaic account of the creation.' A bystander inquires what
has become of the nose of the bust? 'The nose? What care I for the
nose?' cries an enthusiastic amateur. 'Why, sir, if it had a nose I
wouldn't give sixpence for it! How the devil should we distinguish the
works of the ancients if they were perfect? Why, I don't suppose but,
barring the nose, ROUBILIAC could cut as good a head every whit.... A
man must know d----d little of statuary that dislikes a bust for want of
a nose!'

It must be admitted that this is satire of a good trenchant sort. The
reader will find plenty more of it if he will only turn to the comedy
for himself. Our immediate purpose is with the sculptor for whose name
Mr. Foote has found a place in his play.

The rage for collecting antiquities was only equalled by the passion for
'restoring' them when collected. To disinter a torso _here_, and a head
_there_, and then to make a sort of forced marriage of the fragments; to
graft new feet upon old legs; to dovetail stray hands upon odd arms; to
reset broken limbs, and patch and piece mutilations and deficiencies,
constituted the delights and the triumphs of the amateurs. In
accomplishing these exploits the services of foreign workmen were
extensively employed; for, by a curious piece of reasoning, the foreign
sculptor, no matter how limited his capacity, was held to be far more
competent to restore antiquities than the English artist of whatever
reputation. It was, doubtless, in consequence of this demand for foreign
labour, and the liberal manner in which its exertions were recognised
and requited, that Louis Francis Roubiliac found his way to this
country.

In his account of the sculptor, Walpole is singularly brief; supplies
very meagre information; yet when he was compiling his Anecdotes the
fame of Roubiliac was at its highest; he was freshly remembered on all
sides, and the facts of his early life could have been collected, one
would imagine, without much difficulty. He was born, from all accounts,
at Lyons, about the close of the seventeenth century; was a pupil of
Balthazar of Dresden, sculptor to the Elector of Saxony, and came to
England in 1720. That he was without repute in his native land is
evidenced by the fact that no mention of him appears in D'Argenville's
_Lives of the most Eminent Sculptors of France_, published in 1787. Of
his parentage nothing is known. He had apparently received a fair
education; was found to possess a considerable acquaintance with the
literature of his native land; more especially was conversant with the
works of the best French poets, and himself produced original verse of
a respectable quality. Yet, notwithstanding his long residence in
England, he never mastered the English language so as to be able to use
it freely; and in all the anecdotes extant of him he is represented as
employing the broken dialect common to foreigners.

For some years after his arrival in England his occupation would appear
to have been little better than that of a journeyman sculptor, employed
under various masters in botching antiquities. Mr. John Thomas Smith, in
his _Life of Nollekens_, informs us that when Mr. Roubiliac had to mend
an antique, he 'would mix Gloucester cheese with his plaster, adding the
grounds of porter, and the yolk of an egg: which mixture when dry forms
a very hard cement.' Walpole states that the artist had little business
until Sir Edward Walpole (Sir Robert's second son: Horace was the third)
recommended him to execute half the busts in Trinity College, Dublin;
but the date of this act of patronage is not supplied. A story
attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and set forth in his Life by
Northcote, relates that Roubiliac first secured the patronage of Sir
Edward Walpole by picking up and restoring a pocket-book he had dropped
at Vauxhall, containing bank-notes and other papers of value. The artist
declined to receive any reward for this service, although ultimately he
was persuaded to accept the annual present of a fat buck, as a testimony
of gratitude and regard; further, he became the object of Sir Edward's
constant patronage. Horace Walpole says nothing of this story; but the
brothers, it was well known, were not friends, seldom if ever met, and
probably were not closely informed of each other's proceedings. In a
letter written in 1745 to his friend George Montagu, Horace Walpole
gives an amusing description of the patron of Roubiliac, and,
incidentally, reveals the not very brotherly terms subsisting between
himself and the knight: 'You propose making a visit to Englefield Green'
[where Sir Edward lived], 'and ask me if I think it right? Extremely so.
I have heard it is a very pretty place. You love a jaunt--have a pretty
chaise, I believe, and I dare swear, very easy; in all probability you
will have a fine evening; and added to all this, the gentleman' [Sir
E.W.] 'you would go to see is very agreeable and good-humoured,... plays
extremely well on the bass-viol, and has generally other people with
him.... He is perfectly master of all the quarrels that have been
fashionably on foot about Handel, and can give you a very perfect
account of all the modern rival painters.... In short, I can think of no
reason in the world against your going there but one: _do you know his
youngest brother?_? If you happen to be so unlucky, I can't flatter you
so far as to advise you to make him a visit: for there is nothing in the
world the Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his
brother!'

It was probably some years before this that Roubiliac had obtained
employment from Mr. Jonathan Tyers, who in 1732 had become the
proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens. The 'New Spring Gardens at Fox Hall' had
in the previous century been a resort of Mr. Samuel Pepys, who has left
on record his approval of the place. 'It is very pleasant and cheap
going thither,' he writes in 1667, 'for a man may go to spend what he
will or nothing, as all one. But to hear the nightingale and the birds,
and here fiddles and there a harp, and here a Jew's-trump and here
laughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising.' Since
the Pepys period, however, the gardens had fallen into disrepute; had
indeed been closed during many seasons. Mr. Tyers took the place in
hand, bent upon restoring its fame and fashion. He erected an orchestra,
with an organ, engaged the best singers and musicians of the day, built
alcoves for the company, and secured paintings by Messrs. Hayman and
Hogarth for the further embellishment of the gardens. Then he discussed
with his friend, Mr. Cheere, as to adding works of statuary. Mr. Cheere
dealt largely in painted leaden figures, then much employed in 'the art
of creating landscape.' He was 'the man at Hyde Park Corner' of whom
Lord Ogleby in the comedy[4] makes mention when he says: 'Great
improvements, indeed, Mr. Sterling! Wonderful improvements! The four
Seasons in lead, the flying Mercury, and the basin with Neptune in the
middle, are in the very extreme of fine taste. You have as many rich
figures as the man at Hyde Park Corner!' Mr. Cheere advised Mr. Tyers to
set up a statue of Handel. There was some difficulty about the expense.
But Mr. Cheere introduced a clever artist, a Frenchman, content to work
upon very moderate terms. This was, of course, Louis Francis Roubiliac;
who accordingly produced his statue of Handel: greatly to the admiration
of the _habitués_ of Vauxhall. It stood, in 1744, on the south side of
the gardens, under an enclosed lofty arch, surmounted by a figure
playing on the violoncello, attended by two boys; it was then screened
from the weather by a curtain, which was drawn up when the visitors
arrived. Mr. Tyers's plans were crowned with success. Fashion was
enthusiastic on the subject of Vauxhall. Royalty patronized; the
nobility protected and promoted; and the general public crowded Mr.
Tyers's handsome pleasure-grounds. The ladies promenaded in their hoops,
sacques, and caps, as they appeared in their own drawing-rooms: the
beaux of the period were in attendance, with swords and powdered
bag-wigs, their three-cornered hats under their arms. Read Walpole's
account (in another letter to George Montagu) of his visit in 1750. He
accompanied Lady Caroline Petersham and little Miss Ashe--or 'the
Pollard Ashe,' as it pleases him to describe her. The ladies had just
put on their last layer of rouge, 'and looked as handsome as crimson
could make them.' They proceed in a barge, a boat of French horns
attending, and little Miss Ashe singing. Parading some time up the
river they at last debark at Vauxhall, and there pick up Lord Granby,
'arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim'--a tavern at Chelsea frequented
by his lordship and other gentlemen of fashion. Assembled in their
supper-box, Lady Caroline, 'looking gloriously jolly and handsome,'
minces seven chickens in a china dish (Lord Orford, Horace's brother,
assisting), and stews them over a lamp, with three pats of butter and a
flagon of water, stirring, and rattling, and laughing: the company
expecting the dish to fly about their ears every minute. Then Betty, the
famous fruit-woman from St. James's Street, is in attendance with
hampers of strawberries and cherries, waits upon the guests, and
afterwards sits down to her own supper at a side table. The company
become, by-and-by, a little boisterous in their merriment, and attract
the attention of the other visitors; there is soon quite a concourse
round Lady Caroline's box, till Harry Vane fills a bumper and toasts the
bystanders, and is proceeding to treat them with still greater freedom.
'It was three o'clock before we got home,' concludes Walpole. Such was a
fashionable frolic at Vauxhall under Mr. Tyers's management: when
Roubiliac's statue of Handel stood in the midst.

[4] 'The Clandestine Marriage.'

Vauxhall vanished some ten or a dozen years since. Its latter days were
dreary, down-at-heel, and disreputable enough. The statue had departed
long previously. 'It was conveyed to the house of Mr. Barrett, at
Stockwell,' records Mr. J.T. Smith in 1829, 'and thence to the
entrance-hall of the residence of his son, the Rev. Jonathan Tyers
Barrett, D.D., of No. 14 Duke Street, Westminster.' Mr. Henry Phillips,
in his _Musical and Personal Recollections_ (1864), regrets that when
Roubiliac's Handel 'was brought to the hammer, and sold by Mr. Squibb on
the 16th March 1832, for two hundred and five guineas, the Sacred
Harmonic Society did not purchase it in place of its being bought by Mr.
Brown, of University Street.' Nollekens used to value the statue at one
thousand guineas. The plaster model became the property of Hudson, the
preceptor of Reynolds, who possessed a collection of models at his house
at Twickenham. Upon the death of Hudson and the sale of his collection,
the model was bought for five pounds by the father of Mr. J.T. Smith, a
pupil of Roubiliac's, and it then passed into the possession of
Nollekens. When Nollekens's effects were sold, the plaster Handel was
knocked down by Mr. Christie to Hamlet, the famous silversmith. Its
further history has not been traced.

The statue of Handel, the first original work that can, with any
certainty, be ascribed to Roubiliac, may be regarded as a fair specimen
of the artist's manner. He was of the school of Bernini. He followed the
sculptors who infinitely prefer _unrest_ to _repose_ in art. He dearly
enjoyed a _tour de force_ in stone. He liked to deal with marble as
though it were the most plastic of materials: to twist it this way and
that, and rumple and flutter it as though it were merely muslin. To
have carved a wig in a gale of wind would have been a task particularly
agreeable to this class of artists; they would have done their best to
represent each particular hair standing on end. They adored minutiæ: a
shoulder-knot of ribbons, the embroidery of a sword-belt, the stitches
of a seam, the lace of a cravat, were achievements to be gloried in. And
yet, with all this realism in detail, their works are unreal and
artificial in general effect; as a glance at any statue by Roubiliac
will sufficiently demonstrate.

This arises possibly from the artist's fondness for attitude. He seems
to have regarded posture-making as a peculiar attribute of genius. His
figures are always in a constrained and over-studied pose: twisting
about in the throes of giving birth to a great idea: filled with the
divine _afflatus_, even to the bursting of their buttonholes and the
snapping of their braces. His Handel is in a state of exceeding
perturbation: his clothes in staring disorder, his hair floating in the
breeze. The intention was to represent the composer in the act of
raptured meditation upon music; but, as Allan Cunningham remarks, he
looks much more like a man alarmed at an apparition. But then this
exaggeration of demeanour was very much the artist's own manner in
actual life. The Frenchman has always a sort of innate histrionic
faculty: he is for ever, perhaps unconsciously, playing a part. So
Roubiliac was himself incessantly acting and attitudinizing, much after
the fashion of his statues. He seemed to hold that it was expedient, for
the better preventing of mistakes about the matter, that genius should
always in such way advertise itself; there was danger lest it should not
be believed in if it left off making grimaces and striking attitudes.
Perhaps from his own point of view, and in his own time, the artist was
right. It was necessary then to do something to arrest the attention of
a public apathetic on the subject of art-talent, unless, as Peter Pindar
sang, the artist 'had been dead a hundred years.' Possibly, the only way
for a man in those days to gain credit as a genius was by affecting
eccentricity and unconventionality: taking heed that all his proceedings
were as unlike other people's as possible. Thereupon the world argued:
geniuses are not as we are; this person is not as we are; therefore he
must be a genius. Q.E.D.

Consequently, we find Roubiliac--a thin, olive-skinned Frenchman, with
strongly-marked, arching eyebrows, mobile features, and small, sharp,
dark eyes--liable at all times to fits of abstraction, attacks of
inspiration. He will drop his knife and fork while at dinner, sink back
in his chair, assume an ecstatic expression: the fit is on him; he must
abandon his meal and hurry away at once to lock himself in his studio,
and place upon record the superb idea which has so inconveniently
visited him. His companions make allowances for him: men of genius are
often thus. At other times he is absorbed in meditation upon his art:
address him, and he makes no reply, fails to hear. While engaged upon
his statue of Handel, he decides that the great musician must have
possessed an ear of exceeding symmetry, and searches everywhere for a
model. He scrutinizes the ears of all his acquaintances. Suddenly he
pounces upon Miss Rich, the daughter of the Covent Garden manager. 'Miss
Rich,' he cries, 'I must have your ear for my Handel!' In Westminster
Abbey he permits himself to be 'discovered'--to use an appropriate
theatrical term--lost in contemplation of the kneeling figure at the
north-west corner of Sir Francis Vere's monument. His servant, having
thrice delivered a message, without receiving a word in reply, finds his
arm suddenly seized, and his master whispering mysteriously in his ear,
while he points to the statue: 'Hush! hush! he vill speak presently!' At
another time he invites a friend to occupy a spare bed at his house,
gives him his candle, and bids him good-night. Presently the friend is
heard crying aloud in great excitement and alarm; the bed is already
occupied: the dead body of a negress is laid out upon it. 'I beg your
pardon,' says the artist, 'I quite forgot poor Mary vas dere. Poor Mary!
she die yesterday vid de small-pox. She was my housemaid for five, six
years. Come along; I vill find you a bed somevhere else.' All this was
but acting up to the idea Mr. Roubiliac had formed of the abstractedness
and eccentricity of genius.

Serene, sedate Flaxman, who adored the antique, who held that sculpture
should be nothing if not calm and classical, was little likely to
sympathize with Roubiliac, or to comprehend his close following of
Bernini, or indeed to care at all for his productions. 'His thoughts are
conceits; his compositions epigrams,' says Flaxman. And then he is
astounded that Roubiliac, who, at the ripe age of fifty, accompanied by
Hudson the painter, also arrived at a period of life somewhat advanced
for study, visited Italy, should presume to return unmoved and
unenlightened by what he had seen. 'He was absent from home three
months, going and returning,' relates Flaxman, with an air of
indignation; 'stayed three days in Rome, and laughed at the sublime
remains of ancient sculpture!' Positively laughed! To Flaxman, who was
certainly a bigot in regard to the beauties of the antique, if Roubiliac
was something of a scoffer in that respect, this seemed flat blasphemy.
Yet it was hardly to be expected that Roubiliac, at the height of a
successful career, would admit his whole system of art to have been
founded on error--would consent humbly to recommence his profession, and
forthwith prostrate himself at the feet of ancient sculpture. His
admiration for Bernini--whom of course Flaxman cordially detested--was
genuine enough. The Italian's florid manner chimed in with his own
French, gesticulating, mercurial notions of art. If excess of
self-satisfaction prevented him from rendering due homage to the relics
of the past--and possibly his early toils as a 'restorer' further
tended to blind him to their value--he was careful to pay tribute to the
merits of the artist he had selected for his prototype. Hazlitt
mentions, on the authority of Northcote, that when Roubiliac, returned
from Rome, went to look at his own works in Westminster Abbey, he cried
out in his usual vehement way, 'By God! they look like tobacco-pipes
compared to Bernini!' And he was not without honest admiration for the
production of other artists more nearly of his own time. Whenever he
visited the city he was careful to go round by the gates of Bethlehem
Hospital, in Moorfields, over which stood Caius Gabriel Cibber's figures
of Raving and Melancholy Madness: Colley Cibber's '_brazen_, brainless
brothers,' as Pope called them, ignorant, possibly from their having
become so begrimed with London smoke, that they were really carved in
stone. Roubiliac highly esteemed these statues. Though in idea evidently
borrowed from Michael Angelo, they were yet strictly realistic in
treatment, and were reputed to be modelled from Oliver Cromwell's giant
porter, at one time a patient in the Hospital. When Bethlehem was
removed to St. George's Fields the surface of these figures was
renovated by Bacon, the sculptor. They are now deposited in the South
Kensington Museum.

Indeed, what Flaxman intended as a reproach, may sound in modern ears
much more like approval. 'He copied vulgar nature with zeal, and some of
his figures seem alive.' Roubiliac constantly had recourse to the
living forms about him; Flaxman preferred instead to turn to the
antique. We hear of Roubiliac's fondness for modelling the arms of
Thames watermen and the legs of chair-porters: in each case the
particular employment inducing great muscular development of the limbs
to be moulded. And this desire for independent study was really
creditable to the artist. He sought to arrive at the correctness of the
ancients by a pathway of his own: to check, by a distinct reckoning, an
individual reference to nature, and, if need was, fearlessly to depart
from, what they had registered as the result of their investigations. A
more legitimate charge against him was that he was negligent in his
choice of forms for imitation; undervalued refinement of idea; took
altogether a somewhat mean view of nature, or adulterated it with too
large an infusion of the dancing-master. Certainly he was fonder of
_fritter_ than of breadth; and his draperies are often meagre in effect
from the multiplicity of their folds, and his attempt at rendering
_texture_ in marble. This may be noticed in his statue of Sir Isaac
Newton, at Cambridge, where an excess of labour, seems expended on the
silk mantle of the figure--all the small creases and plaitings of the
light material being represented, and the surface highly polished, still
further to increase the resemblance.

This statue, however, was highly admired by Chantrey,[5] and to it, in
his _Prelude_, Wordsworth has dedicated laudatory lines.

[5] 'Chantrey esteemed highly the works of Roubiliac; he admired his
busts; and thought the statue of Newton at Cambridge of the best
character of portrait sculpture. The simplicity of the figure, united
with the apparent intelligence and thought in the countenance, he
considered as quite satisfactory; and although he generally disliked the
imitation of any particular material in drapery, he was reconciled to
the college dress of the philosopher. From its perfect arrangement, the
imitation is so complete that the person who shows the statue at
Cambridge always informs the visitor that it only requires to be black
to render it a deception. He was inclined to tolerate anything that
displayed ingenuity without violating possibility, yet he could never
endure such extraneous and uninteresting matter as the shot, the barrel
of powder, and the bent chamber of a piece of artillery in the monument
to Lord Shannon, in Walton Church, which, with much to commend in the
two figures, has a profusion of objects, and a grey marble background,
representing a tent, altogether unnecessary and derogatory to the purity
of sculpture. Still Roubiliac was rich in thought and reason, for, in
his monument in Westminster Abbey, where he has represented Death as a
skeleton, he felt that the thin and meagre bones would be as offensive
as impracticable; therefore judiciously involved the greater part of the
emblem in a shroud or drapery, adding thereby to his allegory and aiding
his art. However hostile this style may be to the simplicity of
sculpture, the ability of the artist in the conception and execution
deserves high praise. The beadle of Worcester Cathedral informed a
friend of Chantrey's, that when the sculptor was in that city he always
went to see the monument to Bishop Hurd by Roubiliac, and remained a
long time in intent observation of the work, for he thought the artist's
power over the material surprising, though he disliked polishing the
marble.'-_Recollections of Chantrey_, by George Jones, R.A.

The cast taken by Roubiliac from the face of Newton is in the Hunterian
Museum, Glasgow.

There is no necessity for running through a list of Roubiliac's works.
But his statue of Shakespeare is deserving of a passing notice. It of
course fails to satisfy the students of the bard, who delight to pay
equal homage to his philosophy as to his poetry. There is nothing of the
sage about the work: it is wholly of the _stage_ indeed. It is replete
with Roubiliac's established ecstatic super-elegant manner; with a
strong tinge of theatricalism, possibly added by Garrick, for whose
temple at Hampton the statue was undertaken; who attitudinized in aid,
as he imagined, of the sculptor's labours, with a cry of 'Behold the
swan of Avon!' and who, it must be said, at all times entertained a very
'footlight' view of the poet. The price paid for the work was three
hundred guineas only. Roubiliac was to supply the best marble he could
for the money. Unfortunately the block turned out to be much spotted and
streaked; the head was especially disfigured with blue stains. 'What!'
cried Garrick, 'was Shakespeare marked with mulberries?' It became
necessary to sever the head from the shoulders and replace it with one
of purer marble. The statue was completed in 1758. Under the terms of
Garrick's will, it became, on the death of his widow, the property of
the nation, and it now stands in the entrance-hall of the British
Museum. After the purists and the exacting have said their worst against
the statue, it will yet be found--from the spirit of its execution, its
cleverness, and 'go,' to resort to a vulgarism--charming a very large
class of uncritical examiners.

As Lord Chesterfield said of Roubiliac, 'he was the only statuary of his
day; all other artists were mere stone-cutters.' It is very desirable,
in estimating his merits, to bear in mind that he stood alone; his
rivals, Rysbrach and Scheemakers, he had completely outstripped; and,
apart from his following of Bernini, he was clearly an artist of an
original and creative kind. What is hard to forgive in him, however, and
what indeed has much detracted from his reputation, is the fact that a
long list of allegorical monstrosities was in some sort the result of
his example. Charmed with certain of his works, and possessed just then
by particular memories it deemed deserving of monumental celebration,
the nation rushed recklessly to its stone-cutters. The terrible works
which blemish and blister the walls of our cathedrals and churches were
the consequences. Verrio and Laguerre had long set the fashion of
disfiguring ceilings and staircases with their incomprehensible
compositions. Roubiliac carved similar parabolic productions in marble
and set them up in Westminster Abbey and elsewhere. In these, heathen
divinities jostle Christian emblems; Paganism is seen abreast of true
religion. In the aisle of a Gothic abbey, John, Duke of Argyle and
Greenwich, warrior and orator, expires at the foot of a pyramid, on
which History, weeping, writes his deeds, while Minerva (or Britannia)
mourns at the side, and Eloquence above, tossing white arms in the air,
deplores the loss she has sustained. Here we find Hercules placing the
bust of Sir Peter Warren upon a pedestal, while Navigation prepares to
crown it with a laurel wreath; a British flag forming the background and
a horn of plenty emptying its contents beside an anchor and a cannon. In
the monument to Marshal Wade, Time is endeavouring to destroy a pillar
adorned with military trophies, which fame as zealously protects. The
famous Nightingale memorial represents a husband shielding a dying wife
from the attack of Death: a grinning skeleton levelling a javelin as he
issues from the opening iron door of a tomb. The admirable execution of
these works cannot blind the critic to the utter unfitness and folly of
their conception.

But Roubiliac's successors far outbid him in absurdity. To a number of
people a precedent is always a point of departure--an example to be
imitated with violent exaggeration. After our sculptor came a deluge of
imbecility. We are then among stone-cutters who shrink from nothing; we
are treated then to clouds that look like muffins--to waves that
resemble pancakes. Apotheosis becomes preposterous; allegory goes fairly
mad. Glancing at certain post-Roubiliac achievements, we long for an
earthquake. Nicholas Read, the least competent of his pupils, upon the
sculptor's death occupied his studio, advertised himself as successor to
Mr. Roubiliac, and, strange to say, was largely employed: the execution
of the monuments to Admiral Tyrrell and the Duchess of Northumberland,
in Westminster Abbey, being intrusted to him. During his master's life
the apprentice had boasted of the great deeds he would do when he had
served his time. Roubiliac cried scornfully, in his broken English: 'Ven
you do de monument, den de vorld vill see vot von d----d ting you vill
make of it!' His words were justified by Read's monument to Admiral
Tyrrell: possibly the most execrable work in stone in existence; which
is saying a good deal. As Nollekens would often remark of it: 'Read's
admiral going to heaven looks for all the world as though he were
hanging from a gallows with a rope round his neck.'

As Roubiliac's first work was a statue of Handel for Vauxhall Gardens,
so his last was a statue of the same great composer for Westminster
Abbey. He died on the 11th January 1762, and was buried in St. Martin's
Churchyard, 'under the window of the Bell Bagnio.' His funeral was
attended by the leading members of the Society of Artists, then meeting
at the Academy in Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane: the room they
occupied, it may be noted, having been Roubiliac's first workshop. The
artists following the funeral were:--Mr. (afterwards Sir Joshua)
Reynolds, Moser, Hogarth, Tyler, Sandby, Hayman, Wilton, Bartolozzi,
Cipriani, Payne, Chambers (afterwards Sir William), Serres, Ravenet,
the elder Grignon, Meyer, and Hudson; and the dead master's three
pupils, John Adkins, Nicholas Read, and Nathaniel Smith.

Roubiliac died poor; indeed, seriously in debt. Yet he had married well,
it would seem. An old newspaper, under date January 1752, records:
'Married Mr. Roubiliac, the statuary in St. Martin's Lane, to Miss
Crossley of Deptford, worth £10,000.' No particulars of his married life
have come down to us, however. It is probable that his wife predeceased
him. The money was spent in any case. Perhaps she never possessed so
much as the world gave her credit for. The sale of his effects, after
payment of his funeral expenses, left only about one-and-sixpence in the
pound to his creditors. Though constantly employed, the prices he
received were small; and a thoroughly conscientious artist, he never
spared time or labour upon the commissions he had undertaken. He was
not, it is stated, extravagant in his habits; did not waste his means in
the support of a pretentious establishment. On the contrary, his method
of life was very modest: his tastes were simple enough. Society was not
yet prepared to admit the professions to her _salons_; her somewhat
costly caresses were reserved for the ingenious of a succeeding
generation. Roubiliac was content to live that easy pleasant tavern life
favoured by the men of letters and artists of the eighteenth century,
and with which Johnson and Boswell have made us so intimately
acquainted. A bottle of claret and a game of whist solaced his leisure
hours; and these were not numerous: he was constantly to be found in his
studio, late at night, hard at work long after his assistants had
retired: a vivacious, honest, warm-hearted man, much and justly esteemed
by his friends and contemporaries.

He was a familiar acquaintance of Goldsmith, who in his Chinese letters
speaks of him kindly as 'the little sculptor.' He was fond of music, and
Goldsmith would play the flute to him. As Sir John Hawkins records, the
sculptor once tricked the poet by pretending to set down the notes on
paper as Goldsmith played them. Goldsmith looked over the paper
afterwards with seeming great attention, said it was quite correct, and
that if he had not seen him do it he never could have believed his
friend capable of writing music after him. Roubiliac had jotted down
notes at random. Neither had any real knowledge of music, and Goldsmith
played entirely by ear.

His intimate and fellow-sculptor--a painter also--Adrien Charpentier,
executed a characteristic portrait of Roubiliac. He is represented at
work upon a small-size model of his Shakespeare. He is touching the eye
of the figure with his modelling tool, and the task, one of some
delicacy and difficulty, adds to the animation of the operator. His
head, where it is not covered by the fanciful loose head-dress affected
by poets and artists of the period, is bald: possibly shaven, for the
convenience of wig-wearing, after the custom of the time. His dress is
disordered, his bosom bare, his wristbands loose. Had Roubiliac carved
his own statue in stone, it would probably, in treatment, have closely
followed Charpentier's picture.

A portrait of Roubiliac, painted by himself, was sold for
three-and-sixpence only at the sale of his effects. The prices, indeed,
at this sale seem to have been desperately low. There were no
antiquities or objects of _virtù_ brought to the hammer: and Mr. Canto
was not the auctioneer! A copy by Reynolds of the Chandos portrait of
Shakespeare, with seven other pictures, was knocked down for ten
shillings only, the father of John Flaxman being the purchaser. Reynolds
had painted the picture as a present to his friend, Mr. Roubiliac. It
afterwards became the property of Mr. Edmond Malone.




THE RISE OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.


The famous artists of the Continent almost invariably organize schools
of art, converting their studios into miniature academies, surrounding
themselves with pupils and disciples who sit at their feet, listen to
their teaching, assist them by painting for them the less important
portions of their works, adopt their processes, and follow their styles
of drawing and colouring. There is something to be said for the system.
It is an advantage to the young student to be constantly brought into
contact with a real master of the art; to have the opportunity of
working under his supervision, and, on the other hand, of watching him
at his labours, and of witnessing the birth, growth, and completion of
his best pictures. The main objection to the plan is that it may develop
merely imitative ability rather than stimulate genuine originality; that
it inclines the student to follow too scrupulously a beaten track rather
than strike out a fresh pathway for himself. He may reproduce the
virtues of his exemplar's art, but he will certainly copy its vices as
well. And then the difficult question arises: when is he to assert his
independence? At what period in his career is he to cease leaning on his
teacher, and to pursue his own devices unaided and alone? He may have
tied his leading-strings so tightly about him that liberty of thought
and action has become almost impossible to him, and the free use of his
limbs, so to speak, has gone from him. It is quite true that the artist
should be a student all his life; but then he should be a student of art
generally, not of any one professor of art in particular, or he will be
simply the pupil of a great master to the end of the chapter, never a
great master himself.

Objection to a system of instruction that may tend to perpetuate
mannerism, to cramp originality, and fetter genius, has of late years
led to considerable opposition to art-academies generally, whenever more
is contemplated by them than the mere school-teaching of the pupil, and
the affording him assistance at the outset of his professional life.
Haydon was fond of declaring 'that academies all over Europe were
signals of distress thrown out to stop the decay of art,' but that they
had failed egregiously, and rather hastened the result they had intended
to hinder. Fuseli asserted that 'all schools of painters, whether public
or private, supported by patronage or individual contribution, were and
are symptoms of art in distress, monuments of public dereliction and
decay of taste.' He proceeded afterwards to defend such schools,
however, as the asylum of the student, the theatre of his exercises, the
repositories of the materials, the archives of art, whose principles
their officers were bound to maintain, and for the preservation of which
they were responsible to posterity, etc. Dr. Waagen was of opinion that
the academic system gave an artificial elevation to mediocrity; that it
deadened natural talent, and introduced into the freedom of art an
unsalutary degree of authority and interference. The late Horace Vernet
entertained similar views, recommending the suppression of the French
Academy at Rome. M. Say (the Adam Smith of France) held that all
Academies were in truth hostile to the fine arts; and a report of a
committee of the English House of Commons (1836) went far in the same
direction, venturing to predict the probability 'that the principle of
free competition in art as in commerce would ultimately triumph over all
artificial institutions,' and that 'governments might at some future
period content themselves with holding out prizes or commissions to the
different but co-equal societies of artists, and refuse the dangerous
gift of pre-eminence to any.'

In England the school of the individual great artist upon the
continental plan seems to have had no counterpart. Favourite
portrait-painters have, now and then, employed a staff of subordinates
to paint the draperies, and fill in the backgrounds of their works, but
the persons thus employed have been mechanicians rather than artists.
Northcote was the pupil of Reynolds, and Harlowe was taught by Lawrence;
but in neither case was there much attempt at maintaining a school of
manner, as it would be understood out of England. The works of Northcote
and Harlowe contain traces of the teaching of their preceptors little
more than do the productions of their contemporaries, and they certainly
bequeathed no distinct traditions of style to their successors. In
England the foundation of a National Academy, or of an institution in
any measure manifesting the characteristics of a National Academy, took
place long subsequent to the rise of the foreign Academies. And the
English Royal Academy, as at present constituted, cannot be said to
occupy a position analogous to that of foreign academies. As was
expressed in the Report of the Parliamentary Committee of 1836: 'It is
not a public national institution like the French Academy, since it
lives by exhibition and takes money at the door, yet it possesses many
of the privileges of a public body without bearing the direct burthen of
public responsibility.' Or, as was succinctly explained by Mr.
Westmacott, himself an academician, before the commissioners appointed
in 1863 to inquire into the position of the Royal Academy: 'When we wish
not to be interfered with we are private, when we want anything of the
public we are public;' and then he goes on to say: 'The Academy is
distinctly a private institution, and, admitting it is not perfect,
doing great public good all for nothing,' _i.e_., without charge. Mr.
Westmacott was unconsciously pleading guilty to Haydon's accusation that
'the academicians constituted in truth a private society, which they
always put forward when you wish to examine them, and they always
proclaim themselves a public society when they want to benefit by any
public vote.'

For long years the sentiment had prevailed in England that art was no
affair of the State, had no sort of interest for the governing power of
the country, or indeed for the general public; and it was, of course,
left to those persons to whom an Academy of Art was in any way a matter
of necessity or importance, to found such an institution for themselves.
Certainly the encouragement given to the painter during the first half
of the eighteenth century was insignificant enough. He was viewed much
as the astrologer or the alchemist; his proceedings, the world argued,
were sufficiently foolish and futile, but still harmless; he was not
particularly in anybody's way, and therefore it was not worth anybody's
while to molest or displace him. But as for patronizing, or valuing, or
rewarding him, turning upon him the light of the royal countenance, or
cheering him with popular applause, those were quite other matters.
King, and Court, and people had vastly different things to think about.
He was just suffered, not succoured in any way. He must get on as well
as he could, educating, improving, helping himself. As for aid from the
State, that was absolutely out of the question.

For the benefit of his brother artists and of himself, therefore, Sir
Godfrey Kneller, who had lived in happier times, so far as art was
concerned--for the Stuarts had some love for poetry and painting, though
the Hanoverian sovereigns had not--instituted a private drawing Academy
in London in the year 1711. Of this Academy, Vertue, who collected the
materials for the 'Anecdotes of Painting,' which Walpole digested and
published, was one of the first members, studying there some years; and
it was probably of this institution that Hogarth wrote in 1760,
describing it as founded by some gentlemen painters of the first rank,
who, in imitation of the Academy of France, introduced certain forms and
solemnities into their proceedings which were objectionable to several
members, and led to divisions and jealousies in the general body.
Finally, the president and his followers, finding themselves caricatured
and opposed, locked out their opponents and closed the Academy.

Sir James Thornhill, who had headed the most important of the parties
into which the institution had become divided, and who held the
appointment of historical painter to George I., then submitted to the
Government of the day a plan for the foundation of a Royal Academy which
should encourage and educate the young artists of England. He proposed
that a suitable building, with apartments for resident professors,
should be erected at the upper end of the King's Mews, Charing Cross.
The cost of carrying out this plan was estimated at little more than
three thousand pounds; but although Lord Treasurer Halifax gave his
support, the Government negatived the proposition, and declined to find
the necessary means.

Sir James, not altogether daunted by his ill success, determined to do
what he could on his own responsibility, and without aid from the
Treasury. He opened a Drawing Academy, therefore, at his house in James
Street, Covent Garden, on the east side, where, as a writer in 1804
describes the situation, 'the back offices and painting-room abutted
upon Langford's (then Cock's) Auction Room in the Piazza,' and gave
tickets to all who desired admission. It is to be feared that Sir
James's generosity was somewhat abused. Certain it is that dissensions
arose in his Academy as in Kneller's; that one Vandrebank headed an
opposition party, and at length withdrew with his adherents to found a
rival school. According to Hogarth, 'he converted an old meeting-house
into an Academy, and introduced a female figure to make it more inviting
to subscribers.' But this establishment did not last long, the
subscriptions were not forthcoming, and the fittings and furniture of
the school were seized for debt. Upon the death of Sir James, in 1734,
his Academy was also closed.

But a school had now become indispensably necessary to the artists of
the day. After a time they forgot their differences, and again united.
Hogarth had become possessed of his father-in-law Sir James Thornhill's
furniture, which he was willing to lend to an association of artists
founding a new school; a subscription was accordingly arranged, and a
room 'large enough to admit of thirty or forty persons drawing after a
naked figure,' was hired in the house of Mr. Hyde, a painter in
Greyhound Court, Arundel Street, Strand. Hogarth, attributing the
failure of preceding academies to an assumption of superior authority on
the part of members whose subscriptions were of largest amount, proposed
that all members should equally contribute to the maintenance of the
establishment, and should possess equal rights of voting on all
questions relative to its affairs. For many years this academy, which,
in 1738, removed to more convenient premises[6] in Peter's Court, St.
Martin's Lane, existed in a most satisfactory manner. To this school of
Hogarth's, as we may fairly consider it, the majority of the English
painters of the reign of George II. and the early part of George III.,
owed much of their art education. Perhaps the success of the school was
due in great part to the discretion and good management of the artist
who had been nominated its chief instructor: George Michael Moser, a
gold and silver chaser, enameller and modeller, Swiss by birth.
Something also it owed to its unpretentious yet practical and
utilitarian character. The artists were bound together by mutual
convenience; their school, conferring no degrees, aiming at no
distinction, was of equal advantage to all. It was strictly a private
institution, in no way attracting to itself public notice or asking for
aid from the public purse.

[6] Roubiliac's first workshop.

In 1734 there had been founded in England the Dilettanti Society,
composed of noblemen and gentlemen who had travelled abroad, and
professed a taste for the fine arts. In 1749, this society found itself
rich and influential enough to contemplate the establishment of an
academy of art, and even took steps to obtain a site on the south side
of Cavendish Square, and to purchase Portland stone for the erection
there of a building adapted to the purpose, on the plan of the Temple at
Pola. The society then put itself in correspondence with the School of
Painters in St. Martin's Lane, asking for co-operation and assistance in
the carrying out of the project. The painters, however, according to Sir
Robert Strange's account of the transaction, held back: they objected to
aid in the formation of an academy of art which was not to be under the
absolute rule and government of artists. Thereupon the Dilettanti
Society declined to find funds for the foundation of an institute over
which, when completed, they were to possess no influence whatever, in
the management of which they were to be absolutely without voice; and
the negotiation was accordingly brought to an abrupt conclusion. (We may
note here that, curiously enough, the Royal Commission of 1863 proposed,
in some degree, a reversion to this abortive project, and recommended
the introduction of a lay element into the governing body of the
present Royal Academy.)

The proposal of the Dilettanti Society, though rejected, seems yet,
after the lapse of a few years, to have tempted the painters in St.
Martin's Lane to enlarge the boundaries of their institution. In 1753
they fancied the time had come when, with the support of the general
body of artists in England, an effort might be made to found a national
academy. A circular was addressed to all the well-known artists by
Francis Milner Newton, the secretary of the school in St. Martin's Lane,
calling their attention to a scheme for establishing a public academy of
painting, sculpture and architecture, for erecting a suitable building,
receiving subscriptions, appointing professors, making regulations for
the instruction of students, etc. The circular concluded by requesting
attendance at a meeting to be held at the Turk's Head, in Gerard Street,
Soho, when the election of thirteen painters, three sculptors, one
chaser, two engravers, and two architects, in all twenty-one, for the
purposes of the academy, would be proceeded with. But this scheme met
with little support, and was abandoned. Its projectors, defeated and
ridiculed--the subjects of several caricatures of the period--had to
fall back again among their fellow-artists, probably with little
advantage to the harmony of the general body.

Yet the plan of an academy, though it had met with very inconsiderable
encouragement, was not suffered to die out absolutely; somehow the
thing took root, and even grew, in a measure, making no very great sign
of vitality however. But it produced a pamphlet now and then--found
unexpected advocates here and there, dragged on a sickly, invalid sort
of existence. In 1755, a committee of artists resumed the idea, but this
time they appeared to the sympathies of the general public, proposing to
raise an academy as charitable institutions are established, by aid of
popular benevolence, and to apply for a charter of incorporation from
the Crown, the terms of the charter being formally drawn up, and even
published. The prospectus made handsome mention of the pecuniary
assistance which had been some time before proffered by the Dilettanti
Society; whereupon the society renewed its promise of support, and
re-opened negotiations with the committee of artists. But difficulties
again arose. Sir Robert Strange, who attended the meetings of the
parties, found on the part of the Dilettanti Society 'that generosity
and benevolence which are peculiar to true greatness;' but on the side
of the majority of the artists, he regretted to observe 'motives
apparently limited to their own views and ambition to govern.' Again the
negotiation was broken off, the project went to pieces, and now the hope
of establishing a national academy in England seemed in its worst
plight--hopeless--gone down to zero.

In 1757, Hogarth, on the resignation of his brother-in-law, Mr.
Thornhill, was appointed, in the sixtieth year of his age, painter to
the king. Hogarth, it may be noted, had always opposed the attempt to
found an academy. He supported the plan of an art-school, deeming such
an institution of practical value to the painter. But he appears to have
thought that an academy would only multiply portrait painters, of whom
there was quite a sufficiency, would not create a demand for works of
real art-value, or improve the taste of patrons in that respect. In
1758, Hogarth's idea of an art-school met with unexpected support in the
opening of the Duke of Richmond's Gallery of Casts and Statues at
Whitehall. Invitation to students was given by public advertisements.
For a time Cipriani gave instruction in the gallery, and it is recorded
that the result was a purer taste among British artists in the drawing
of the human figure than they had previously displayed.

And now help was to come to the plan of an academy from a most
unexpected source, in a most accidental way. In the reign of George II.,
if little was done for art and artists, great interest was displayed in
works of public benevolence. From that period dates the rise of very
many national hospitals and charitable institutions of various kinds.
Among others, the London Foundling Hospital, which was incorporated in
1739, and received especial favour and support from the legislature and
the public. To the sympathy with the objects of this charity displayed
by the artists, are attributable the first recognition of them by the
nation as a community meriting regard and assistance; and ultimately
the rise and progress of an Academy of Art in England.

In 1740, when Handel came forward to aid the funds of the charity by the
performance of his oratorios, Hogarth presented to the governors of the
institution his famous portrait of Captain Coram, and designed an
emblematical decoration to be placed over the chief entrance of the
hospital, then in Hatton Garden. In 1745, the west wing of the present
edifice in Guildford Street being completed, other artists followed
Hogarth's example, and presented, or promised to present, to the
hospital specimens of their art. In 1746, the grateful court of the
charity elected its artist-benefactors--Hayman, Hudson, Allan Ramsay,
Lambert (the scene-painter), Wilson, Moser, Pine, Hogarth, and Rysbrack
(the sculptor), among them--to be governors, with leave to dine at the
hospital, at their own expense, on the 5th of November in each year, to
commemorate the landing of King William III., and 'to consider what
further ornaments might be added to the building without expense to the
charity.' For many years the artists availed themselves of this
opportunity--met, dined, drank claret and punch, and discussed
professional affairs to their hearts' content.

The Foundling had become quite a pet charity with Parliament and people.
It was assisted by donations from the Crown and grants from Government;
while voluntary contributions from the public flowed liberally into its
treasury. From 1756 to 1760 nearly 15,000 children were received into
the asylum. The open, uninquiring system, still existing on the
Continent, then prevailed. A basket hung at the gate, in which to
deposit the child, on whose behalf the aid of the institution was to be
invoked; a bell was then rung to give notice was forthwith received and
provided for. The hospital to the officers of the establishment, and the
foundling became the resort and rendezvous of all classes. The public
seemed never to weary of watching over and visiting its _protégés_, and
the donations of the artists which adorned the walls of the hospital,
were greatly admired and talked about, and soon became of themselves a
decided source of attraction. The nation began to appreciate the fact
that it possessed some really excellent English painters, and the
painters made the discovery that there existed a large public interested
in them and in their doings, and prepared to give favour and support to
an exhibition of works of art.

In November 1759, a meeting was held at the Turk's Head, Gerard Street,
Soho, which seems to have been a sort of house of call for artists, as
well as for literary men,[7] when it was resolved that once in every
year, at a place to be appointed by a committee, chosen annually, for
carrying the design into execution, there should be held an exhibition
of the performances of painters, sculptors, architects, engravers,
chasers, seal-cutters, and medallists, the profits to be expended in
charity--'towards the support of those artists whose age and
infirmities, or other lawful hindrances, prevent them from being any
longer candidates for fame;' the charge for admittance to be one
shilling each person. A committee of sixteen was chosen, consisting of
six painters, two sculptors, two architects, two engravers, one
seal-cutter, one chaser, one medallist, and the secretary, to which
office Mr. Francis William Newton had been appointed, to carry out the
views of the meeting.

[7] It was at the Turk's Head that were held the meetings of the famous
LITERARY CLUB, founded by Reynolds. Johnson, Burke, Dr. Nugent,
Beauclerk, Langton, Goldsmith, Mr. Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins were
the other original members.

Application was then made to the Society of Arts, which had been
established five years previously by Mr. Shipley, of Northampton
(brother of the bishop of St. Asaph), to permit the use of its rooms,
then in the Strand, opposite Beaufort Buildings, for the purposes of the
proposed exhibition. The Society gave its consent, deciding that the
period of exhibition should be from the 21st of April to the 8th of May,
and only objecting to the proposal that money should be taken at the
doors for admission. This objection was removed by admitting the public
gratis, and charging sixpence for the catalogue of the works of art on
view. Sixty-nine artists sent works to the exhibition. The number of
works exhibited was 130. The Society's rooms were crowded to
inconvenience; the exhibition was a great success. There was a sale of
6582 catalogues; the proceeds enabling the committee to defray all
expenses, to purchase £100 consols, and to retain a small balance in
hand. No record was kept of the number of visitors to the exhibition;
the purchase of catalogues was not obligatory, so the amount sold is
hardly a clue to the number of visitors. Many doubtless dispensed with
catalogues altogether, and many borrowed from their friends. But the
results of the exhibition satisfied its warmest well-wishers.

There was but one drawback to the general satisfaction. The Society of
Arts conceived itself at liberty to exhibit among the other works the
drawings of certain of its students, whose industry and merit had
entitled them to gold medals and other rewards. The untutored public,
misled by the talk about prizes, persisted in regarding these juvenile
essays as the works judged by the _cognoscenti_ to be the most
meritorious of the whole exhibition, and rendered them the homage of
extraordinary attention and admiration accordingly. Mature professors of
art had to endure the mortification of finding their best productions
passed over by the unskilful multitude, and the highest praises awarded
to mere beginners. The newspapers of the day--newspapers have never been
very learned in art matters--fell into the same delusion, and in their
notices of the exhibition, paid attention only to these most over-rated
prize-holders.

But, altogether, the artists had good cause to be satisfied. They had
held the first exhibition of works of art in England, and the exhibition
had thoroughly succeeded. They had opened up a new source of profit to
themselves in the display of their productions. They had obtained from
the general public recognition of themselves and their profession. The
Crown might be negligent of them, the State might be apathetic as to
affairs of art, aristocratic patrons might be led astray by the _ignis
fatuus_ of love of the old masters, by the fashionable tastes for
antiquities; but here was 'the million' on the side of its artist
compatriots; the voice of the nation had declared itself in favour of
the nation's art. Really there seemed at last to be hope, if not
something more, for the English painter, and the long-looked-for English
academy appeared fairly discernible on the horizon.

The decided success of the exhibition in the Strand was yet attended by
certain disadvantages. Ill-fortune would probably have closely united
the artists; prosperity seems to have divided them--to have engendered
among them jealousies and dissensions. The proceeds of the exhibition
soon proved a source of encumbrance and difficulty to the exhibitors.
Their original intention had been to apply their profits to the relief
of distressed painters. But now among a certain party a strong feeling
was manifested in favour of devoting the money to the advancement of
art. Finally it was resolved that the matter should stand over until the
funds should have accumulated to the amount of £500, and that a vote of
the majority of artists should then decide the question.

Further evidences of disorganization and want of definite aim were to
come. While many artists desired to continue relations with the Society
of Arts, others regarded the conditions imposed by that Society as
vexatious and embarrassing. Particularly they objected to the
introduction into their exhibition of the works of the Society's
students. They represented further that the exhibition had been 'crowded
and incommoded by the intrusion of persons whose stations and educations
disqualified them for judging of statuary and painting, and who were
made idle and tumultuous by the opportunity of attending a show;' and by
way of remedy, proposed that in future the price of the catalogue should
be one shilling, and that no person should be admitted without one, but
that a catalogue once purchased should serve as a ticket of admission
during the season. The Society of Arts, however, distinctly refused
assent to these changes. The dispute quickened, waxed warm. Finally a
large and distinguished section of the artists, comprising in its ranks
the committee of sixteen who had managed the first exhibition,
determined to sever their connexion with the Society of Arts, and to
assert their independence. They accordingly engaged a room of an
auctioneer in Spring Gardens for a display of their works during May
1761. The more timid party still clung to the friendly Society in the
Strand, and there held a second exhibition. From the spring of 1761,
therefore, there were two exhibitions of works of art in London.

The exhibitors in Spring Gardens styled themselves the 'Society of
Artists of Great Britain;' the old committee of sixteen being at the
head of the affairs of the new society. The designs on their catalogue
by Wale and Hogarth demonstrated their intention to devote their revenue
to the relief of the distressed. Of the catalogue, rendered attractive
by these embellishments, 13,000 copies were sold. No charge was made for
admission; but the purchase of a catalogue was made imperative. The
catalogue, however, was a ticket of admission for the season. The
receipts of the exhibition of 1761 amounted to £650.

At the other exhibition in the Strand, to which sixty-five artists
contributed, the old system prevailed. Visitors were at liberty to
purchase a catalogue or not, as they chose; but a check was placed upon
the indiscriminate admission of all classes by requiring from visitors
the production of tickets which had been distributed gratuitously by the
exhibitors, and were readily obtainable. After defraying all expenses
the exhibition produced upwards of £150, which sum was appropriated in
benefactions--to the Middlesex Hospital £50, to the British Lying-in
Hospital £50, to the Asylum for Female Orphans £50, the small balance
remaining after these donations being distributed among distressed
artists. In the following year the Strand exhibitors took the first
practical measures for founding a provident society for the benefit of
British artists by forming themselves into an organized body, with a
constitution and rules for their proper government, and assuming the
title of 'The Free Society of Artists, Associated for the Relief of the
Distressed and Decayed Brethren, their Widows and Children.' The society
was to be maintained by the sale of the catalogues of an annual
exhibition, or by charging for admission to such exhibition, as a
committee of management to be chosen every year should determine; such
committee having also power to reject the works sent in that they might
deem unworthy of exhibition, and to hang or dispose of accepted works
'without respect to persons.' Every artist who contributed works to the
exhibition for five years in succession, intermission by reason of
illness or absence from the country not being a disqualification, was to
be a perpetual member of the society and entitled to share in its
benefits and privileges. In 1763 the institution took legal shape, and
was 'enrolled of record in His Majesty's Court of King's Bench,' fifty
members signing the roll.

Meanwhile the rival association had not been idle. It had increased the
number of its committee from sixteen to twenty-four; this committee
exercising absolute authority over the affairs of the society. Vacancies
in its numbers were filled up by the remaining committee-men, without
reference to the society, while it enjoined upon its members that its
transactions should be kept a profound secret from the general body of
the society. Already a love of rule seems to have gained upon this
committee. Its members began to regard themselves in the light of
academicians for life--as perpetual governors, rather than officers of
the society, removable at its pleasure: an erroneous view of their
position which led to much trouble in the sequel. Other changes had
taken place--a charge of one shilling was made for admission to the
exhibition of 1762, the catalogue being given gratis, and appended to
the catalogue appeared an address written on behalf of the society by
Dr. Johnson, explaining the objects of the exhibition, the reason for
charging for admission to it, and a change that had been determined upon
in regard to the appropriation of the society's revenues. 'The purpose
of this exhibition,' declared the address, 'is not to enrich the
artists, but to advance the art; the eminent are not flattered by
preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt. Whoever hopes to
deserve public favour is here invited to display his merit.' When the
terms of admission were low, it was stated, the rooms 'were thronged
with such multitudes as made access dangerous, and frightened away those
whose approbation was most desired.' A curious plan for appropriating
the expected profits was then set forth. The works sent in for
exhibition were to be reviewed by the committee of management, and a
price secretly set on every work and registered by the secretary. At
the close of the exhibition the works were to be sold by auction; if
they sold for more than the price fixed by the committee, the artists
were to receive the increased amount, but if they sold for less, then
the deficiency was to be made up to the artists out of the profits of
the exhibition. For the most part the pictures at the subsequent sale by
auction did not realize the prices set upon them by the committee, and
upwards of £120 had to be paid to the artists out of the exhibition
funds. Upon the whole, the plan did not work very well. The society's
attempt to come between buyer and seller satisfied neither party. After
this one experiment, the scheme was abandoned.

The society had, however, little reason to complain of want of public
support. In 1762 the exhibition produced over £520, and in 1763, £560.
In 1764, the receipts rose to £760. But the internal economy of the
institution was in a less satisfactory state. Many members expressed
discontent at the arbitrary power exercised by the committee--a
permanent body, not always recruited from the best sources, for many of
the most eminent artists declined to accept office, or were neglectful
of their duties as committee-men, so that ultimately there seemed to be
danger of the whole government of the society falling into the hands of
the least competent, if the most active, of its members. And the society
was much in want of a distinct legal status. After all, it was but a
private sort of corporation most imperfectly constituted; it was growing
rich without its property being regularly secured to it. Enrolment was
not regarded as sufficiently answering this object, and it was proposed
at a general meeting of the members that the Crown should be solicited
to incorporate the society by charter. The committee, content with the
existing state of things under which they exercised extreme authority,
opposed these projects. However, the general body proved too strong for
them; the charter was petitioned for and granted on the 26th of January
1765. In substance it followed the terms of the charter which had been
proposed by the artists ten years before, when an attempt had been made
to establish an academy 'on general benevolence.' It placed no limit to
the number of the society's members, or 'Fellows,' as they were
thenceforward to be called; the committee-men being designated
'Directors.' It gave the society arms, a crest, a constitution, power to
hold land (not exceeding the yearly value of £1000), to sue and to be
sued, etc.; and it authorized the society, every St. Luke's Day, to
elect Directors to serve for the ensuing year. In other respects the
charter was somewhat indefinite; but it was presumed that under the
power to make bye-laws, all points in dispute might be finally dealt
with and adjusted. The 'Fellows' were disposed to be conciliatory. They
elected the late committee to be the first 'Directors,' under the
charter. Everything seemed to promise well. Two hundred and eleven
artists signed the roll of the society, promising to the utmost of their
power to observe and conform to the statutes and orders, and to promote
the honour and interest of the 'Society of Incorporated Artists of Great
Britain.'

But between the Fellows and the Directors there seems to have been but a
hollow truce after all. They were bent upon different plans and objects.
The Fellows entertained practical views enough. The only academy of art
was still the very inadequate private school in St. Martin's Lane--a
distinct institution, a common resort of artists, whether members of a
society or not. The Fellows desired out of the funds of their society to
found a public academy of a high class, that should be of real value to
the profession. The Directors, among whom the architects Chambers and
Payne were remarkably active, proposed, on the other hand, 'that the
funds should be laid out in the decoration of some edifice adapted to
the objects of the institution.' The Fellows declared that in this
project the society, as a whole, had no interest; and at a general
meeting in March 1767, they carried a resolution 'that it should be
referred to the Directors to consider a proper, form for instituting a
public academy, and to lay the same before the meeting in September
next.' An attempt was then made on the part of the Directors to comply
with the terms of this resolution, and yet to reserve the funds of the
society for the future carrying out of their own pet scheme.

Dalton, an artist of very inconsiderable fame, who held the appointment
of librarian to the King, was treasurer to the Incorporated Society, and
a leading member of its direction. He had, some time previously,
attempted to establish a print warehouse in Pall Mall, but the
speculation had signally failed; accordingly the speculator had been
left with very expensive premises on his hands. He now conceived that
his warehouse might readily be converted into a very respectable academy
of arts, and he contrived to obtain the King's encouragement of the
plan. Soon, at another general meeting, the Fellows were informed that
the King intended to take the fine arts under his special protection,
and to institute a public academy under royal patronage. At these good
tidings opposition ceased. The resolution passed at the March meeting of
the society was at once repealed. Universal satisfaction prevailed;
there was great rejoicing among the Fellows at the brilliant prospects
dawning upon art and artists. The words 'Royal Academy' were substituted
for 'Print Warehouse' over the door of Mr. Dalton's house in Pall Mall.
The subscribers to the school in St. Martin's Lane, on the
representation of Mr. Moser that they would thenceforward have free
access to the Royal Academy, that their school would be thus superseded,
and that their furniture would consequently be of no further use to
them, were prevailed upon to assign to him their anatomical figures,
busts, statues, lamps, and other effects and fittings, which were
forthwith removed to Pall Mall. But bitter disappointment was to follow
all this hopefulness and satisfaction. It soon appeared that there was
no money applicable to the support of the royal establishment. The King
had given nothing. The Directors would consent to no outlay from the
society's funds. The Royal Academy was to be self-supporting. The
artists had in truth gained not at all--were in a somewhat worse
position than before. They were required to pay an annual fee of one
guinea to an academy in which their comfort and convenience were less
studied than in the old school in St. Martin's Lane. For now the
disturbing element of non-professional membership was permitted. Any
person, not intending to study, was allowed entrance to the academy, on
payment of an annual guinea. The discontent of the artists was extreme,
and was vehemently expressed.

Public interest in the society, however, had meanwhile in no way abated.
The exhibition of 1767 produced over eleven hundred pounds. But the
dissensions of the Directors and Fellows had become notorious---
arrested general attention, and attracted the comments and censures of
the newspapers. The Fellows forthwith determined to effect a change in
the composition of the directorate, whose oppression and mismanagement
had been, as they judged, so fatal to the interests of the general body.
It was proposed that a bye-law should be passed, rendering compulsory
the retirement of eight out of the twenty-four Directors every year, and
that the retiring Directors should be replaced by other members of the
society. But this not unreasonable proposition was strenuously resisted
by the Directors, who argued that by the terms of the charter exclusive
authority to originate new laws was vested in them absolutely. It was at
length determined between the contending parties that the question
should be decided by a reference to the opinion of the Attorney-General.
The Directors, after much procrastination, drew up and submitted their
case. The Attorney-General (Mr. William de Grey, afterwards Lord
Walsingham) was of opinion, in answer to the questions put to him, that
under the charter the Directors were to make laws, and the general body
to approve or reject the same, and that, therefore, the Directors were
not bound to take into consideration a resolution of a general meeting
in order to form it into a bye-law. But it was suggested that the
Directors should consider how far it might be prudent to accept such a
resolution, 'since the same majority that resolved might unite in
electing Directors of the same opinion with themselves, especially in
the case of resolutions that appeared to be reasonable and proper;' the
Attorney-General being further of opinion that the proposed bye-law was
not in any way inconsistent with the terms of the society's charter.
Upon this opinion the Fellows acted. They submitted to the Directors the
enactment of a bye-law rendering no more than sixteen of the existing
Directors capable of being re-elected for the year ensuing. The
Directors were obstinate: they declared that the proposed law would be
an attack on the freedom of elections, a dangerous innovation, and an
ungrateful return for all the exertions they had made on behalf of the
society. At the general meeting following this, held on St. Luke's day,
the 18th of October 1768, the struggle terminated: the Fellows, made
less moderate by opposition, elected sixteen of their number to fill the
places of sixteen old Directors, who were superseded and deposed. Mr.
Joshua Kirby was appointed president in the room of Mr. Hayman, who had
succeeded to that post on the death of Mr. Lambert in 1765; Mr. Newton
and Mr. Dalton were removed from the offices of secretary and treasurer.
On the 10th November the eight remaining of the old Directors declared
that they could not act with their new colleagues, believing them bent
upon measures repugnant to the charter and tending to the destruction of
the society; and accordingly they placed their resignations in the hands
of Mr. Kirby, the new president. They desired to be understood, however,
as not objecting to all the new Directors. On the contrary, they
professed to entertain the highest esteem for Mr. Kirby himself and
'some others,' who had been elected to their offices without taking
part in any intrigue, and who, as being men of honour and ability in
their professions, were extremely proper persons to fill the places they
occupied. The conflict was thus brought to a close. The Fellows had
delivered their society from the persistent misrule under which it had
so long suffered. The price of this emancipation was, in the first
place, the loss of all the twenty-four Directors. Further and more
important results, however, were to be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, brief mention must be made of the transactions of the smaller
institution--the Free Society of Artists. Adherence to the Society of
Arts, though it brought with it restriction as to charging for admission
to the annual exhibitions, and made the sale of catalogues almost its
only source of revenue, was yet maintained by the Free Society for four
years. But, in 1765, the Free Society no longer availed itself of the
premises of the Society of Arts. An independent exhibition was then
opened at a large room, hired for the purpose, in Maiden Lane, Covent
Garden, being part of the warehouse of Mr. Moreing, an upholsterer; and
the exhibition of the following year was also held in the same place. In
1767 and 1768 the Society exhibited in two large rooms at the bottom of
the Haymarket, Pall Mall. The Society published from time to time
statements of its progress. In one of these the growth of the Society,
its utility, and purposes, are plainly set forth. Every member
afflicted with illness and applying for relief had been assisted with
donations of from three, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, up to one hundred
guineas. The Society possessed funds applicable to the purposes of
benevolence to the amount of £1200. With a continuance of public favour
the Society trusted to be able in a few years, not only to provide for
its distressed, but 'to found an academy, and to give premiums for the
encouragement of every branch in the polite arts.' Up to 1768 one
hundred members had signed the Society's roll.

The story of the two societies has thus been brought down to 1768. From
that year dates the rise of a third society--the Royal Academy of Arts:
an institution which has long outlived its rivals, which has indeed fed
upon and gained strength from their decay and decease, as at the outset
it owed its existence to the success of their previous efforts, and
which, in spite of constant opposition and bitterest attack, flourishes
still, as though possessed of that longevity which is proverbially the
attribute of the threatened. 'The Academy,' said Haydon, 'originated in
the very basest intrigue.' Undoubtedly there was intrigue in connexion
with its origin, but not necessarily of the 'very basest' character.
Some allowance must be made for 'poor human nature.' The contest
dividing the Incorporated Society had been a very keen one--had been
distinguished by much angry feeling and acrimonious spirit. It was
hardly to be supposed that the defeated party, the sixteen expelled
Directors and the additional eight who retired in sympathy with the
expulsion of their colleagues, would sit down patiently under their
defeat: their disgrace as they considered it. They had declined to
regard themselves as members of a fluctuating committee, although such
was distinctly their legal position, removable at the will of the
society. For eight years they had held the reins of power; the
supposition that these were to be theirs for life had some excuse, and
they argued that their displacement, if in accordance with the letter of
the law, was yet contrary to its spirit. It was true a majority was
against them; but they found fault with the composition of the majority.
There had been, they declared, too indiscriminate an admission of
Fellows. Inferior practitioners, troublesome, pragmatical, jealous,
anxious for power, had availed themselves of the loose terms of the
charter, to creep into the society, and conspire against the legitimate
influence of the respectable members. This was the Directors' view of
the case. What was now to be their course? Should they submit, serve
where they had once ruled, sink into simple Fellows, and thus, as it
were, grace the triumph of their foes? Perish the thought! They would
found a rival society!

It must not be understood that the Directors, as opposed to the Fellows,
were wholly without friends in the society. Though outnumbered, they had
yet a certain small following; while many held aloof from both parties,
ill-pleased at the virulence with which their dissensions had been
conducted. Reynolds in particular declined all interference in the
contentions which were rending in twain the society. He had long
withdrawn himself from the meetings of the Directors, declaring himself
no friend to their proceedings, and when he discovered their intention
'to raise up a schism in the arts,' as Sir Robert Strange phrases it,
and make a separate exhibition, he declared that he would exhibit with
neither body.

An exhibition of the works of the ex-Directors in competition with the
exhibition of the Fellows would have been fair play enough--a perfectly
legitimate and honourable proceeding. It would then have rested with the
public to declare which exhibition displayed the greater amount of merit
and was the more worthy of their encouragement and support. Further, the
attempt on the part of the Directors to obtain the favour of the King
for their undertaking was hardly to be blamed. But what was distinctly
unjustifiable in their proceedings was their intriguing to secure a
monopoly of this favour: to possess themselves exclusively of the royal
patronage, to the detriment and ultimate ruin, not merely of the society
their own connexion with which had been so violently severed, but of the
unoffending and praiseworthy smaller institution--the Free Society. In
this matter, however, it must be said, the ex-Directors were not alone
to blame. Other patrons of art may exhibit themselves, if they please,
as partisans, but a royal patron should not condescend to a position at
once so inequitable and so undignified. To this derogation, however,
George III., good-humouredly weak or pertinaciously obtuse, suffered
himself to be brought. He became the patron of a clique, and even
yielded himself as an instrument to be employed for the injury of that
clique's antagonists. Whatever had been the faults of the other
societies as against the founders of the Royal Academy--and it must be
admitted that the Free Society was, perfectly blameless in that
respect,--as against the Crown they had done nothing to merit royal
displeasure, but, on the contrary, were entitled, with the other
enlightened institutions of the country, to count upon the King's
encouragement.

Some such demon as, whispering in the ear of Visto, bade him 'Have a
taste!' had been wheedling George in. The King proclaimed himself a
patron of the arts, and then proceeded to assume the airs of a
connoisseur. Certainly he did not distinguish himself much in that
capacity; his pretensions were not backed by any real learning. He made
woeful mistakes. For instance, he never appreciated Reynolds,[8] whose
merits one would think were sufficiently patent--needed not a conjurer
to perceive them--passing him over to appoint Allan Ramsay serjeant
painter, when Hogarth dying vacated that honorary office. He preferred
West's works, because they were smoother--and Dance's, because they
were cheaper!

[8] It has been alleged that the King objected to Reynolds on account of
the painter's friendship for Burke and Fox.

West was the King's pet painter. Dr. Drummond, Archbishop of York, had
obtained for him, in February 1768, the honour of an audience. The
artist took with him to the palace a picture, 'Agrippina landing with
the Ashes of Germanicus,' which he had executed for the archbishop. The
King greatly admired the work, and West forthwith received the royal
command to paint 'The Departure of Regulus for Rome.' Later in the year
a sketch of the picture was submitted to the King. At this time the
newspapers were full of the dissensions of the Incorporated Society.
Concerning these the King inquired of West. The artist--one of the eight
Directors who had voluntarily quitted the Society after the ejection of
their sixteen colleagues--related to the King the history of the
Society's proceedings from the Directors' point of view. Whereupon the
King stated 'that he would gladly patronize any association that might
be found better calculated to improve the arts.'

West returned from the palace full of this royal announcement. He at
once put himself in communication with three ex-Directors of the
Incorporated Society,--Cotes, a fashionable portrait-painter; Chambers,
who had been instructor in architecture to the King when Prince of
Wales; and Moser, the gold-chaser and enameller, who had taught the King
drawing. These four artists formed themselves into a committee to
arrange the plan of an academy. The King, it is stated, took great
personal interest in the scheme, and even drew up several laws with his
own hand. He expressed great anxiety that the design should be kept a
profound secret, lest it should be converted into a vehicle of political
influence. The artists did not object to this secrecy; they rather
preferred that their plan should, as it were, open fire upon their foes
unexpectedly, with the suddenness of a battery promptly unmasked.

We now come to the well-known story of the arrival at Windsor Castle of
Kirby, the President of the Incorporated Society, at a time when the
King is inspecting West's completed picture of, 'Regulus.' Kirby joins
in the general admiration of the work; he turns to West, and trusts that
it is the artist's intention to exhibit the picture. West replies that
the question of exhibition must rest with his Majesty, for whom the
picture has been painted. 'Assuredly,' says the King, 'I shall be happy
to let the work be shown to the public.' 'Then, Mr. West, you will send
it to my exhibition,' adds the President of the Incorporated Society.
'No!' his Majesty interposes, 'it must go to _my_ exhibition--_to the
Royal Academy_!' Mr. Kirby is thunderstruck,--the battery had been
unmasked. Profoundly humiliated he at once retires from the royal
presence, not to survive the shock very long, says the story. However,
he lived to 1774.

Mr. Kirby was a landscape painter of repute in his day. Author of a
work on perspective, and the friend of Gainsborough, he had risen from
quite humble life to a position of some eminence, entirely by his own
exertions. It was admitted that he had attained the post of President of
the Incorporated Society without intrigue on his part, and that both by
reason of his professional skill and his private worth, he was entitled
to the respect alike of the friends and foes of that institution. The
King condescended to play an ignoble part when he took pains to mortify
and distress so honest a gentleman. Rival artists might conspire against
the Society from which they had seceded, and seek to mine its position;
but his Majesty stooped very low when he lent his royal hand to the
firing of the train. However, he had thrown himself heart and soul into
the project for founding a new society--the Royal Academy. So that he
reared that edifice, he seemed to care little how he might sully his
fingers in the process. In this, as in some other occurrences in the
course of his reign, he demonstrated sufficiently that he could on
occasion be obstinate and fatuous, wanting both in discrimination and in
dignity.

After the scene at Windsor Castle, in which poor Mr. Kirby had been
demolished, a meeting was held at the house of Wilton, the sculptor, of
some thirty artists, including, of course, the twenty-four ex-Directors
of the Incorporated Society, to hear Chambers, the architect, read the
proposed academy's code of laws which had been prepared under the
immediate inspection of the King, and to nominate the officers of the
institution. Some uneasiness had been felt during the day as to whether
Reynolds would or not join the academy. He had hitherto abstained from
all part in the proceedings; but that he should be the first president
had been decided by the King in consultation with the other
conspirators. Penny, the portrait-painter, had visited Reynolds to sound
him on the subject, but found him obdurate. West was then deputed to
wait upon the greatest English painter, and to leave no means untried in
the way of persuading him to join the new association. For a time
Reynolds was cold and coy enough, but influenced at last by the
allurement of probable knighthood, or the force of other arguments, he
permitted himself to be carried in West's coach to the meeting at
Wilton's. He was at once declared president; Chambers being appointed
treasurer, Newton secretary, Moser keeper, Penny professor of painting,
and Dr. William Hunter professor of anatomy. Reynolds, however, deferred
his acceptance of the post of president until he had consulted his
friends Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke upon the subject, and it was not until
a fortnight after his election that he finally consented to fill the
proposed office.

The first formal meeting of the Royal Academy was held in Pall Mall on
the 14th December 1768. Mr. Chambers read a report to the artists
assembled, relating the steps that had been taken to found the Academy.
No allusion was made in this report to the secret negotiations and
consultations with the King; but it was set forth that on the previous
28th November, Messrs. Chambers, Cotes, Moser, and West had had the
honour of presenting a memorial to the Crown, signed by twenty-two
artists, soliciting the royal assistance and protection in establishing
a new society for promoting the arts of design. The objects of the
society were stated to be 'the establishing a well-regulated school or
academy of design, for the use of students in the arts, and an annual
exhibition, open to all artists of distinguished merit, where they may
offer their performances to public inspection, and acquire that degree
of reputation and encouragement which they shall be deemed to deserve.'
'We apprehend,' the memorialists had proceeded, 'that the profits
arising from the last of these institutions will fully answer all the
expenses of the first: we even flatter ourselves they will be more than
necessary for that purpose, and that we shall be enabled annually to
distribute somewhat in useful charities. Your Majesty's avowed patronage
and protection is therefore all that we at present humbly sue for; but
should we be disappointed in our expectations, and find that the profits
of the society are insufficient to defray its expenses, we humbly hope
that your Majesty will not deem that expense ill-applied which may be
found necessary to support so useful an institution.' This memorial, so
the report went on to state, the King had received very graciously:
saying that he considered the culture of the arts as a national concern,
and that the memorialists might depend upon his patronage and assistance
in carrying their plan into execution; further, he desired that a fuller
statement in writing of their intentions might be laid before him.
Accordingly, Mr. Chambers had drawn up a sketch of his plan, and, having
obtained its approval by as many artists as the shortness of time would
allow, had submitted it to the King, who, on the 10th of December 1768,
signified his approbation, ordered that the plan should be carried into
execution, and with his own hand signed Mr. Chambers's plan--'the
Instrument,' as it was then, and has ever since been called. Mr.
Chambers then read the Instrument to the meeting, after which the
artists present signed an obligation or declaration, promising to
observe all the laws and regulations contained in the Instrument, and
all future laws that might be made for the better government of the
society, and to employ their utmost endeavours to promote the honour and
interest of the establishment, so long as they should continue members
thereof. The Academy thus obtained its constitution, and assumed such
form of legal existence as it has ever possessed.

The Instrument is simply a document on parchment, signed by the King,
but unsealed and unattested. It recites that sundry eminent professors
of painting, sculpture, and architecture had solicited the King's
patronage and assistance in establishing a society for promoting the
arts of design, and that the utility of the plan had been fully and
clearly demonstrated. Therefore the King, being desirous of encouraging
every useful undertaking, did thereby institute and establish the said
Society under the name of the 'Royal Academy of Arts in London,'
graciously declaring himself the patron, protector, and supporter
thereof, and commanding it should be established under the forms and
regulations thereinafter set forth, which had been humbly laid before
his Majesty, and had received his royal assent and approbation. The
rules declared that the Academy should consist of forty members only,
who should be called Academicians; they were to be at the time of their
admission painters, sculptors, or architects of reputation in their
professions, of high moral character, not under twenty-five years of
age, resident in Great Britain, and not members of any other society of
artists established in London. Under this rule, it will be noted, that
engravers could not aspire to the honours of the Academy. Sir Robert
Strange regarded this as a direct affront to the members of his
profession, and attributed it to his well-known attachment to the
Incorporated Society and hostility to the designs of the ex-Directors of
that body. The provision that members of other societies were to be
disqualified from becoming members of the Academy, was of course aimed
at the rival institutions, and undoubtedly a severe restriction upon
the general body of artists. Of the forty members who were to constitute
the Academy, the Instrument named thirty-six only; a circumstance which
justified suspicion that the leaders in the enterprise had so small a
following that they could not muster in sufficient force to complete the
prescribed number of original members: or they may have purposely left
vacancies to be supplied as artists of eminence were detached from the
rival societies or otherwise became eligible. Among the thirty-six,[9]
while many artists of fame appear, it must also be said that many very
obscure persons figure, whose names, but for their registry upon the
list of original Academicians, would probably never have been known to
posterity in any way. Nearly a third of the number are foreigners. There
are two ladies, Mesdames Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, the first and
last female Academicians. Then there are coach, and even sign-painters,
a medallist, and an engraver--Bartolozzi, whose nomination was in direct
contravention of the Academy's constitution and an additional injustice
to Sir Robert Strange. The originators of the plan must surely have felt
that they were marching through Coventry with rather a ragged regiment
at their heels. The number of reputable names missing from their list
was remarkable: Allan Ramsay, serjeant-painter to the King; Hudson,
Reynolds's preceptor, and Romney, his rival; Scott, the marine painter;
Pine, the portrait painter; and the engravers Strange, Grignon, and
Woollett; beside such artists as Edward Edwards, Joseph Farington, Ozias
Humphrey, John Mortimer, Robert Smirke, Francis Wheatleigh, and many
others (members of the Incorporated Society for the most part), who,
though ultimately connected with the Academy, had no share in its
foundation.

[9] The thirty-six members nominated by the Instrument were:--Joshua
Reynolds, Benjamin West, Thomas Sandby (architect), Francis Cotes
(portrait painter), John Baker (coach panel painter), Mason Chamberlin
(portrait painter), John Gwyn (architect), Thomas Gainsborough, J.
Baptist Cipriani (Italian), Jeremiah Meyer (German, miniature painter),
Francis Milner Newton (portrait painter), Paul Sandby (water-colour
painter and engraver), Francesco Bartolozzi (Italian, engraver), Charles
Catton (coach panel painter), Nathaniel Hone (portrait painter), William
Tyre (architect), Nathaniel Dance (portrait painter), Richard Wilson, G.
Michael Moser (Swiss, gold-chaser and enameller), Samuel Wale (sign
painter and book illustrator), Peter Toms (portrait and heraldic
painter), Angelica Kauffman (Swiss), Richard Yeo (sculptor of
medallions, engraver to the Mint), Mary Moser (Swiss, flower painter),
William Chambers (architect), Joseph Wilton (sculptor), George Barrett
(landscape painter), Edward Penny (portrait painter chiefly), Agostino
Carlini (Italian, sculptor), Francis Hayman, Dominic Serres (French,
landscape painter), John Richards (landscape painter), Francesco
Zucarelli (Italian, landscape painter), George Dance (architect),
William Hoare (historical and portrait painter, father of Prince Hoare),
and Johan Zoffany (German, historical and portrait painter). The number
of forty was not completed until 1772, when were added Edward Burch (gem
sculptor and wax modeller), Richard Cosway (miniature painter), Joseph
Nollekens (sculptor), and James Barry (historical painter). Seven of the
original thirty-six Academicians do not appear on the roll of the
Incorporated Society in 1766, viz., Baker, Cipriani, Toms, A. Kauffman,
M. Moser, Penny, and Hoare.

Having named the original members, the Instrument proceeded to lay down
rules for the further government of the institution; to prescribe the
manner of electing future members, a council, and president, a secretary
and keeper (the treasurer was to be nominated by his Majesty, 'as the
King is graciously pleased to pay all deficiencies'), the appointment of
different professors, the establishment of schools, a library for the
free use of students, and of an annual exhibition of works of art to be
'open to all artists of distinguished merit.' New laws and regulations
were to be framed from time to time, but to have no force until
'ratified by the consent of the general assembly and the approbation of
the King.' At the end of the Instrument the King wrote, 'I approve of
this plan; let it be put in execution'--adding his signature.

This Instrument, with the bye-laws and regulations made upon its
authority, cannot be said to possess the characteristics or incidents of
a charter, still less of an Act of Parliament, or indeed, to present any
very formal or legal basis upon which to found a national society. The
Commissioners of 1863, while they recommended the grant of a charter to
define satisfactorily the position of the Academy, considered the
Instrument as a solemn declaration by the original members of the main
objects of their society, to which succeeding members had also
practically become parties, and were of opinion that its legal effects
would be so regarded in a court of law or equity. It did not appear,
however, that the Academy itself was in favour of the objects of its
institution being more clearly defined by means of a charter. In 1836,
Haydon boldly accused the Academicians that they 'cunningly refused
George IV.'s offer of a charter, fearing it would make them responsible
"to Parliament and the nation."' The charge would seem to have some
truth in it. Certainly the Academy has made no attempt to obtain a
precise definition of its position in regard to the crown and the
public.

The Incorporated Society viewed with natural alarm the rise of a rival
institution, favoured in so marked a manner by the patronage of the
crown. Sir Robert Strange at once proposed the presentation of a
petition, setting forth in plain terms the grievances that would be
entailed upon the Society, and upon artists generally, by the illiberal
constitution of the Academy and its apprehended monopoly of the royal
protection. Sir Robert's proposition was, however, not accepted. A
petition of a more cautious nature, from which everything likely to
offend had been carefully eliminated, was presented to the King by Mr.
Kirby, the president. His Majesty replied to the prayer of the petition,
'that the Society already possessed his Majesty's protection; that he
did not mean to encourage one set of men more than another; that, having
extended his favour to the Society incorporated by charter, he had also
encouraged the new petitioners; that his intention was to patronize the
arts; that the Society might rest assured his royal favour should be
equally extended to both, and that he should visit the exhibitions as
usual.' This reply was gracious enough: but it was not ingenuous. The
King was not as good as his word. He _did_ mean 'to encourage one set of
men more than another.' He visited the exhibition of the Incorporated
Society in 1769 _for the last time_. In the same year he presented the
funds of the Society with £100, _his last donation_. Meanwhile his
visits to the Royal Academy were constant, his preference for that
institution clearly manifested; between 1769 and 1780 he presented to
its funds from his privy purse upwards of £5000.

The Incorporated Society, shut out from studying in the Royal Academy,
determined to open an art-school for themselves and their pupils.
Application was made to the Academy for a return of the properties which
Mr. Moser had carried away it was now alleged, under false pretences,
from the St. Martin's Lane Academy. It was intimated that payment should
be made for the chattels in question, or that they should be restored.
The Royal Academy, however, took no steps in the matter. Tired of
waiting, the Incorporated Society at last fitted up at great expense a
new studio for themselves at premises in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden,
occupied in more modern times by the Cyder Cellars.

Early in 1769 the Academy opened its art-schools in Pall Mall; Reynolds
presiding, read his first discourse. One grave defect in the Academy's
constitution was then in a measure remedied. The art of engraving was
recognised: a law was passed, by which not more than six engravers could
be admitted as 'associates of the Royal Academy.' In April the first
exhibition was held. The number of works exhibited was 136. Among these
were four portraits by Reynolds, seven by Cotes (some of them in
crayons, in which he was supposed to excel), and three by Gainsborough.
West sent two pictures--the 'Regulus,' of which mention has already been
made--the firebrand work which brought about indirectly so much mischief
and discussion--and a 'Venus lamenting the Death of Adonis.' There were
also landscapes by Barrett, Gainsborough, Sandby, Serres, Wilson, and
Zucarelli, and 'poetical and historical works by Cipriani, Bartolozzi,
and Miss Kauffman. The exhibitors were fifty in number; Mr. Pye, in his
'Patronage of British Art,' divides them into, 'Members of the Royal
Academy, 33; non-members, _having no interest in the revenue_, 17.' A
glance at recent catalogues will demonstrate the changed proportion now
existing between exhibiting members and exhibiting non-members, as
compared with the first exhibition of the Royal Academy.[10] By this
exhibition a clear profit of nearly £600 was realized. A sum of about
£150 was expended in charity; the surplus was applied towards the
general expenses of the Academy. These, however, so far exceeded the
receipts as to necessitate a grant from the privy purse to the amount of
£900. The King and Queen visited the Academy exhibition in May,
accompanied by a guard of honour. From this incident arose the practice,
still existing, of stationing sentries at the doors of the Academy
during the exhibition.

[10] 'In the year 1862 there were 1142 works exhibited; of
these 146 were the works of academicians, leaving 996 for the
non-academicians.'--_Sir Charles Eastlake's Examination before the Royal
Academy Commission_, 1863.

In addition to a charge of sixpence for the catalogue, visitors were
required to pay one shilling for admission to the exhibition. In
explanation of this charge, the following curious advertisement preceded
the list of pictures: 'As the present exhibition is a part of the
institution of an academy _supported by royal munificence_, the public
may naturally expect the liberty of being admitted without any expense.
The Academicians, therefore, think it necessary to declare that this was
very much their desire, but they have not been able to suggest any other
means than that of receiving money for admittance to prevent the rooms
being filled by improper persons, to the entire exclusion of those for
whom the exhibition is apparently intended.'

This advertisement, which was repeated in the Academy catalogue of 1780,
would seem at the first sight to suggest that the Academicians had
failed to comprehend their exact position. Or had the King in his
enthusiasm for their cause led them to believe that he intended to
defray their expenses wholly from the privy purse without aid from the
public? However this may be, it has long been understood that the
amounts taken at the doors of the exhibition for admission, and the
sales of catalogues, form the real support of the Academy. A gross
income of at least £10,000 is thus produced, half of which amount, as
clear profit, the Academy is enabled every year to add to its ever
increasing store of wealth.[11]

[11] Out of its accumulated riches the Academy has defrayed, the cost of
its new Galleries in Burlington Gardens, first opened in 1869.

Concerning the destinies of the rival institutions but brief mention
must suffice. Their downfall dates from the rise of the Royal Academy.
Still, they died lingering deaths. The Incorporated Society struggled
gallantly though vainly against the superior advantages and the royal
preference enjoyed by the Academy. In 1772, the Society built the large
room, the Lyceum, in the Strand, at an outlay of £7500. But in a year or
two the decrease in its revenues compelled it to part with the building
at a sacrifice. In 1776, the Society held no exhibition. In 1777 and
1778 it exhibited at a room in Piccadilly, near Air Street. In 1779, it
again did not exhibit. In 1780, it appeared once more at its old
quarters in Spring Gardens. But its existence now was of a very
intermittent kind. In 1781 and 1782 it made no sign. In 1783, and again
in 1790, it held exhibitions at the Lyceum. In 1791, it made its
farewell appearance in public at the rooms in Spring Gardens. In 1836,
Mr. Robert Pollard, the last surviving member of the Society, being then
81, handed over its books, papers, letters, documents, and charter, to
the Royal Academy. This was the formal surrender of the Incorporated
Society; but in truth the struggle had been decided against it long and
long before.

The Free Society dragged on its existence, making feeble annual
exhibitions until 1779 inclusive; but at that time it had long outlived
public notice. In 1769, it had built a room next to Cumberland House,
Pall Mall. But this, ill-fortune probably compelled it to surrender, as
in 1775 its exhibition was held in St. Alban's Street. The provident,
praiseworthy, modest aims of the Free Society ought to have saved it
from ruin--ought to have excited public sympathy on its behalf. But this
was not to be. The Royal Academy was left master of the field. In the
success of the King's exhibition, the older institutions were forgotten
and lost.




WIDOW HOGARTH AND HER LODGER.

On the 26th day of October 1764, died William Hogarth. Very ailing and
feeble in body, but still with his heart up and his mind, as ever, alert
and vigorous and full of life, he had moved on the day before from his
pleasant snug cottage at Chiswick to his town house in Leicester Fields.
He turned now and then in his bed uneasily, as he felt the venomous
slanders of Wilkes and Churchill still wounding and stinging him like
mosquito bites; else was the good little man at peace. 'I have
invariably endeavoured to make those about me tolerably happy.' 'My
greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury.' So he wrote
at the close of his life. And there was much love for him in the
world--culminating in his own household. His servants all had been years
and years in his service; he had painted their portraits and hung these
on his walls; there is credit to both master and servants in the fact.
After all, a man may, if he chooses, be a hero even to his
valet-de-chambre. None could have dreamt the end was so near. It is not
known that any doctor was attending him. He had read and answered a
letter in the morning; fatigued with the effort, he had retired to bed.
He was alone when the fatal attack came on: the 'suffusion of blood
among the arteries of the heart.' Starting up, he rang the bell with a
violence that broke it in pieces; they had not thought so much strength
remained to him. He fell back fainting in the arms of Mary Lewis, his
wife's niece; she had lived in his house all her life, and was his
confidential assistant in publishing and selling his prints. She
supported the poor creature for two hours, and he drew his last breath
in her arms.

Widow Hogarth wore her deep crape, be sure, with an aching void in her
heart, and an acute sense of the painful wrench to her life caused by
this bereavement. A fine stately, woman still, though she was now
fifty-five. But six years back she had sat for Sigismunda: the dreadful
mistake in historical art which poor Hogarth had vainly perpetrated in
emulation of Correggio. Something of the beauty of the Jane Thornhill,
who thirty years before had stolen away with her lover to be married at
the little village church of Paddington, must have yet remained. The
interment, as all the world knows, took place in Chiswick Churchyard; a
quiet funeral, with more tears than ostrich-plumes, more sorrow than
black silk. It was not for some six or seven years after, that the
sculptured tomb was erected, and Garrick and Johnson calmly discussed
the wording of the epitaph. It is 'no easy thing,' wrote the doctor.
Time had something numbed their sense of loss when they sat down to
exchange poetical criticism; though habit is overpowering, and it would
have taken a good deal, at any time, to have disturbed Johnson from his
wonted pose of reviewer; just as the dying sculptor in the story,
receiving extreme unction from his priest, found time to complain of the
mal-execution of the crucifix held to his lips. 'Pictured morals,' the
doctor wrote, 'is a beautiful expression, but _learn_ and _mourn_ cannot
stand for rhymes. _Art_ and _Nature_ have been seen together too often.
In the first stanza is _feeling_, in the second _feel_. _If thou hast
neither_ is quite prose, and prose of the familiar kind,' etc. etc.

Hogarth dead and buried, the window shutters re-opened, and heaven's
glad light once more permitted to stream into the rooms, the red eyes of
the household a little cooled and staunched, came the widow's dreadful
task of examining the property of the deceased, of picking up the
fragments that remained. How to live? Survivors have often to make that
painful inquiry. There was little money in the house. The painter's life
had been hard-working enough; the labourer was willing, but the harvest
was very scanty. Such a limited art public! such low prices! The six
'Mariage a la Mode' pictures had been sold for one hundred and twenty
guineas, including Carlo Maratti frames that had cost the painter four
guineas each. The eight 'Rake's Progress' pictures had fetched but
twenty-two guineas each. The six 'Harlot's Progress,' fourteen guineas
each. The 'Strolling Players' had gone for twenty-six guineas! O
purblind connoisseurs! Dullard dillettanti! Still there was something
for the widow; not her wedding portion--that seems to have long before
melted away. Sir James Thornhill had been forgiving, kind, and generous
after a time--two years--and opened to the runaway lovers his heart and
his purse. But there was little to show for all that now. There hung on
the walls various works by the dead hand. Portraits of the Miss
Hogarths, the painter's sisters; they had kept a ready-made clothes shop
at Little Britain gate. Portraits of the daughter of Mr. Rich, the
comedian; of Sir James and Lady Thornhill; of the six servants; and his
own likeness, with his bull-dog and palette; besides these there was the
great effort, 'Bill Hogarth's "Sigismunda," not to be sold under £500;'
so he had enjoined. Alas! who would give it? (At the sale after the
widow's death it was knocked down to Alderman Boydell for fifty
guineas!) Indeed, it would be very hard to sell all these. And she did
not. She clung to the precious relics, till death relaxed her grasp,
when the auctioneer's hammer made short work of the painter's remains,
even to his maul-stick. But to live? There were seventy-two plates, with
the copyright secured to her for twenty years by Act of Parliament.
These were hers absolutely under her husband's will. Here at least was
subsistence; indeed, the sale of prints from the plates produced, for
sometime, a respectable income. And then, too, there was the gold ticket
of admission to Vauxhall Gardens (for the admission of six persons, or
'one coach'), presented by the proprietor in his gratitude for the
designs of the 'Four Parts of the Day' (copied by Hayman), and the two
scenes of 'Evening,' and 'Night,' with representations of Henry the
Eighth and Anne Boleyn.

And the house at Chiswick was a possession of Hogarth's. It was not then
choked up with buildings, but stood cosy and secluded in its well-stored
garden of walnut, mulberry, and apple trees, with the head-stones to the
poor fellow's pets--the bullfinch and dog Dick, who died the same year
as his master; and a very old mulberry tree stricken by lightning, and
only held together by the iron braces made by his directions, perhaps
applied with his own hands. How full of memorials of the dead painter!
Pen-and-ink sketches on the panels of the wainscoted room on the ground
floor: and the painting-room over the stables, with its large window,
probably one of _his_ improvements on first taking the house, looking on
to the pleasant garden below. Doubtless the widow locked up the
painting-room, and kept the key on the ring at her girdle. Years after,
Sir Richard Phillips jotted down his memories of Chiswick--how he, a
schoolboy then with his eyes just above the pew door, the bells in the
old tower chiming for church, watched 'Widow Hogarth and her maiden
relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, draped in their silken
sacks, their raised head-dresses, their black calashes, their lace
ruffles, and their high crooked canes, preceded by their aged servant
Samuel: who after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her
Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut
the pew.' State and dignity still remained to the widow; and there, up
in the organ loft, was the quaint group of choristers Hogarth had so
admirably sketched, headed by the Sexton Mortefee, grimacing dreadfully
as he leads on his terrible band to discord. A square, ugly church
enough, with the great Devonshire pew--a small parlour with the roof
off--half blocking up the chancel: a thing to be forgiven _then_, for
the lovely Duchess sat there, and the sight of her angel head was surely
enough to give new zest to the congregation's prayers and praises. A
church such as Hogarth often drew, with its 'three-decker' arrangement
of desks: the clerk, the reader, and the preacher, rising one above the
other, and, top of all, one of those old-fashioned massive, carved
sounding-boards, which gave so queer a Jack-in-the-box aspect to the
pulpit, and prompted dreamers in dreary sermons, heedless of George
Herbert's counsel that if nothing else, the sermon 'preacheth patience,'
to speculate on severing the iron rod that supported the board, letting
it fall, and so, by one process shutting up, so to speak, both preacher
and preaching.

The house in Leicester Fields also remained: the house on the east side
of the square, called the 'Golden Head,' with its sign cut by Hogarth
himself from pieces of cork glued together, and gilded over. He often
took his evening walk in the enclosure in his scarlet roquelaire and
cocked hat, now and then, no doubt, casting admiring glances at his
gaudy emblem. The Fields were only just merging into the Square. We
learn that in 1745, the streets were so thinly built in the
neighbourhood, that 'when the heads of the Scottish rebels were placed
on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields, with a telescope, to
give persons a sight of them for a halfpenny a piece.' Just as _we_ are
sometimes offered a view of Saturn's rings from Charing Cross! Hogarth's
house now forms part of a French Hotel. The lean French cook staggering
under the roast beef in the 'Gates of Calais' picture has been amply
revenged. The fumes of French ragouts incessantly rise, on the site
where the cruel caricature was drawn.[12]

[12] The Sablonière Hotel, however, is now (1869) in course of
demolition.


It is hard to say when the widow's income first began to droop--when the
demand for William Hogarth's prints slackened. They circulated largely,
but their price was never high. The eight prints of the 'Rake's
Progress' could be purchased at Mrs. Hogarth's house, in Leicester
Fields, for one guinea; 'Lord Lovat,' 'Beer Street,' and 'Gin Lane,'
for a shilling each only, and all the others could be obtained upon like
easy terms. It cannot be told when the bill first appeared in Widow
Hogarth's window--'Lodgings to Let.' But eight years after Hogarth's
death there was certainly a lodger in the house in Leicester Fields--a
lodger who could exclaim, 'I also am a painter!'

Alexander Runciman was born in Edinburgh in 1736. His father an
architect, of course the baby soon began to play with the parental
pencils. _That_ is not remarkable--but he evidenced rather more ability
than the average baby artist. At twelve he was out in the fields with
paints and brushes, filling a sketch-book with crude representations of
rocks, clouds, trees, and water. At fourteen he was a student under John
Norris, whom it pleased the period to regard as an eminent landscape
painter. He was the wildest enthusiast in the studio--and there are
generally a good many wild enthusiasts in a studio. 'Other artists,'
said one of his comrades, 'talked meat and drink, but Runciman talked
landscape!' At nineteen he renounced further tutelage, and started on
his own account as a landscape painter. He commenced to exhibit his
works. Every one praised, but unfortunately no one purchased. The market
seemed to be only for the show, not the sale of goods. The notion
prevailed absolutely that art was an absurd luxury, which but very few
could afford to indulge in. A middle-class man would have been
considered very eccentric and extravagant, who in those days bought a
picture, unless it happened to be his own portrait. There was some
demand for portrait painting--_that_ paid--especially if you, the
painter, were nearly at the head of your profession. Poor Wilson had
given up portraiture, and soon found himself painting landscapes, and
starving the while. So Runciman also discovered quickly enough--and with
characteristic un-reason abandoned landscapes and took to historical
art, which, being in much less request even than landscape painting,
rather enhanced and quickened his chances of ruin. But somehow he
struggled on. At thirty it occurred to him that he had never been to
Rome, and that the fact had probably confined his powers and limited his
prosperity. He packed up his things--an easy task--and, with a very
small purse--that he should have had one at all was a marvel--set out
for the south. He was soon, of course, on his knees, in the regular way,
doing homage to Raphael and M. Angelo. There are always professional
conventionalisms. It was as necessary then for the artist to be rapt and
deliriously enthusiastic about his calling as for the lawyer to wear a
wig and gown.

At Rome he swore friendship with Fuseli. The Scot was the elder, but the
Swiss the more learned. They had probably both quite made up their minds
about art before they met, and what drew them together was very much the
similarity of their opinions. Neither was liable to change of view, let
who would be the teacher. Runciman no more took his style from Fuseli,
than Fuseli from Runciman, and the unquestionable resemblance between
their works was only the natural result of a similarity of idiosyncrasy.
They both worked hard together, making painstaking copies of the great
masters. 'Runciman I am sure you will like,' Fuseli wrote home, 'he is
one of the best of us here.' No doubt Fuseli found him quite a kindred
spirit--mad as himself about heroic art--given to like insane
ecstasies--like pell-mell execution--like whirling, extravagant
drawing--like wild ideas interpreted by a like wild hand, and in a like
execrable nankeen and slate tone of colour. Runciman returned in 1771,
and proceeding to Edinburgh, arrived just in time to receive the vacant
situation of professor of painting to the academy established in
Edinburgh College, in the year 1760. The salary was £120 a year. The
artist accepted the appointment gleefully, and, had his knowledge and
his taste been equal to his enthusiasm, few could have better fulfilled
the duties of his office. Soon he began to dream of a series of colossal
pictures that should make his name live for ever in the annals of art.
The dream took form. There were but two or three men in Scotland who
would even hear out the project. Fortunately he lighted on one of these.
Sir James Clerk consented to the embellishment of his hall at Penicuik
with a series of pictures illustrative of Ossian, by the hand of
Runciman.

Ossian was the rage--quotations from the blind bard of Morven were in
every one's mouth. True, Dr. Samuel Johnson had denounced the whole
thing as an imposition 'as gross as ever the world was troubled with.'
Dr. Blair wrote in defence, 'Could any man, of modern age, have written
such poems?' 'Why yes, sir,' was the answer--'Many men, many women, and
many children.' Macpherson wrote offensively and violently to Dr.
Samuel, who replied heartily enough--'I received your foolish and
impudent letter ...I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what
I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian ...I thought your book an
imposture. I think so still. Your rage I defy,' etc. etc. What was all
this to Runciman? He had no learning--he cared nothing for
antiquarianism. He took for granted that Ossian was authentic. Many
north of the Tweed looked upon it merely as a national question.
Macpherson was a Scotchman, therefore it was the duty of Scotchmen to
side with him. His condemners were English, and were jealous, of course,
and wrong no doubt. Runciman was hard at work at Penicuik, painting as
for his life, while all this discussion was going on, and Macpherson and
his friends were striving might and main to produce an ancient
manuscript anything like the published poem, and so confute and silence
Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Garrick, and lastly Boswell, who did not even
_pair_ with the doctor on the occasion, though the question _did
affect_ Scotland. Runciman had sketched out and commenced his twelve
great pictures. 1. Ossian singing to Malvina. 2. The valour of Oscar. 3.
The Death of Oscar, etc. etc. Who reads Ossian now? Who cares about
Agandecca, 'with red eyes of tears'--'with loose and raven locks?'
'Starno pierced her side with steel. She fell like a wreath of snow
which slides from the rocks of Ronan.' Who knows anything now about
Catholda, and Corban Cargloss, and Golchossa and Cairbar of the gloomy
brow? For some time the poems held their own, retained their popularity;
their partisans fought with their opponents for every inch of ground,
even though discovery was mining them. And some fragments found their
way in a fashion to the stage. But a little while ago there was living a
ballet-master, who owed his baptismal name to parental success in the
grand ballet of 'Oscar and Malvina, or the Cave of Fingal!' But this
must have been produced years after Runciman. The poems had merit, and
that floated them for a long time; but the leak of falsehood made its
way--they sunk at last. And Macpherson? Well, if a poet will be an
impostor, he must prepare to be remembered by posterity rather for his
fraud than his poetry.

He found time to paint some other subjects as well. An 'Ascension' on
the ceiling over the altar of the Episcopal chapel in the Cowgate of
Edinburgh--a wild and ungraceful work according to Cunningham, speaking
of it from recollection, though Runciman thought very highly of it. And
he had patrons and critics loud in their applause. In his picture of
'The Princess Nausicaa and her Nymphs surprised at the river side by
Ulysses,' one connoisseur detected 'the fine drawing of Julio Romano,'
another, 'the deep juicy lustre of Tintoret,' and a third 'a feeling and
air altogether the painter's own;' which last is probable. In 1772 he
exhibited some pictures in London. At all events, there was no bill in
Widow Hogarth's window then, for the lodgings were let, and Alexander
Runciman was the lodger.

'She let lodgings for subsistence:' so runs the story. The demand for
William Hogarth's prints was still bringing in some income, however.
Lord Charlemont wrote to Edmund Malons from Dublin, June 29th,
1781:--'That men of task should wish for good impressions of Hogarth's
prints is not at all surprising, as I look upon him to have been in his
way, and that too an original way, one of the first of geniuses. Neither
am I much surprised at the rage you mention, as I am by experience well
acquainted with the collector's madness. Excepting only the scarce
portrait, my collection goes no further than those which Mrs. Hogarth
has advertised, and even of them a few are wanting, which I wish you
would procure for me, viz., _The Cock-Match_, _The Five Orders of
Periwigs_, _The Medley_, _The Times_, _Wilkes_, and _The Bruiser_. As my
impressions are remarkably good, having been selected for me by Hogarth
himself, I should wish to have these the best that can be had; and if
Mr. Stevens, who promised me his assistance, should happen to meet with
any of these prints of which I am not possessed--I mean such
compositions as do honour to the author, as for instance, _The Satire on
the Methodists_, _The Masquerade_, etc.--I should be much obliged to him
to purchase them for me..... I have no objection to suffering _The
Lady's Last Slake_ to be engraved, but, on the contrary, should be happy
to do anything which might contribute to add to the reputation of my
deceased friend. But then it must be performed in such a manner as to do
him honour; for otherwise I should by no means consent. One great
difficulty would be to procure a person equal to the making a drawing
from it, as the subject is a very difficult one. Hogarth had it for a
year with an intention to engrave it, and even went so far as almost to
finish the plate, which, as he told me himself, he broke into pieces
upon finding that after many trials he could not bring the woman's head
to answer his idea, or to resemble the picture.' The lady, let us note,
is a portrait of Miss Hester Lynch Salusbury, afterwards Mrs. Thrale and
Madame Piozzi. Later his Lordship wrote again:--'I have this moment
received a letter from Mrs. Hogarth requesting that if _I should permit
any one to make an engraving of 'The Lady's Last Stake,' I would give
the preference to a young gentleman who lodged in her house, as by such
preference she should be greatly benefited._ On this application I
consider it necessary to immediately inform you, as the affection I bore
towards her deceased husband, my high regard for his memory, and,
indeed, common justice will most certainly prevent me from preferring
any one else whatsoever to her in a matter of this nature. At the same
time, I must add, that whoever shall make a drawing from my picture must
do it in Dublin, as I cannot think of sending it to London.

'Will you, my dear Malone, be so kind in your morning walk as to call on
this lady and read to her the above paragraph, as such communication
will be the most satisfactory answer I can give to her letter? The same
time you will be so kind as to mention the circumstances, and my
resolution to the person in whose behalf the postscript in your letter
was written. Perhaps matters may be settled amicably between him and
Mrs. Hogarth, in which case I have no objection, provided the execution
be such as not to disgrace the picture or its author, that the drawing
be made in Dublin, and that Mrs. Hogarth be perfectly contented, and
shall declare her satisfaction by a certificate in her own handwriting.
I know your goodness will pardon all this trouble from,' etc. etc.

These letters are extracted from Prior's _Life of Malone_. To the last
letter, it is to be noted, Mr. Prior assigns the date of 1787,--surely a
misprint for 1781. Etchings by Runciman are extant, and it is clear
that Mrs. Hogarth had looked to his executing an engraving of 'The
Lady's Last Stake,' possibly by way of settling an account owing to her
for his lodgings. The plan fell through, however. It was perhaps not
worth Mr. Runciman's while to journey to Dublin to engrave the picture.

But twenty years after William Hogarth's death the copyrights had
expired--the poor woman's income from this source was clean gone. She
was then absolutely 'living by her lodgings;' and it was not until three
years more 'that the King interposed with the Royal Academy, and
obtained for her an annuity of forty pounds.' Poor Widow Hogarth! Yet
she would not sell her William's pictures left in his house!

Much of the untamed, unmanageable, heterodox nature of Runciman's art
pertained to his life generally. Gay, free-thinking, prankish--with a
tendency to late-houred habits that must have often scandalized his
landlady--and a talent for conversation rare amongst artists, who, as a
rule, express their thoughts better by their brushes than by word of
mouth; kind-hearted, sociable, never behind in passing the bottle--no
wonder he gathered round him a group of eminent men of his day, most of
them with attributes much like his own, who did not flinch from strong
outspeaking, who were not shocked by many things. Kames, Monboddo, Hume,
and Robertson knocked at the late William Hogarth's door, and paid
their respects to Widow Hogarth's lodger. Did _she_ ever stand before
his easel and contemplate his works? Doubtless often enough when the
painter was out firing off his smart cracker sayings, and making away
with his port wine. And what did she think of his art? How different
from William's! She could understand _him_ always. There was always
nature on _his_ canvas, and meaning and common sense--there was always a
story plainly, forcibly told. But Mr. Runciman's meanings were not so
clear. What was all the smoke about, and the waving arms, and the
distorted features, and the Bedlamite faces, and, oh! the long legs and
the flying draperies? Surely draperies never did fly like that--at least
William Hogarth never painted them so. And then--really this was too
much--he, Alexander Runciman, under that roof had presumed to paint a
'Sigismunda weeping over the heart of Tancred,' with William's treatment
of the same great subject actually in the house! To bed, Widow Hogarth,
in a rage.

Of course Runciman had _his_ opinion about Hogarth and his art,
despising both, no doubt, and agreeing with Fuseli in deeming him a
caricaturist merely, and his works 'the chronicle of scandal and the
history book of the vulgar.' It was so much nobler to portray
wild-contortions from Ossian, demoniac nightmares and lower region
revelations, than to paint simply the life around they had but to
stretch out a hand to grasp. Yet with all their talk, in the humbler
merits of colour, expression, and handling, they were miles behind
Hogarth. He has been so praised as a satirist, there is a chance of his
technical merits as a painter being overlooked. One only of the 'Mariage
à la Mode' pictures, for all that is really valuable in art, might be
safely backed against all that was ever done by both Fuseli and Runciman
put together. Yet they looked upon him as rather a bygone sort of
creature--a barbarian blind to poetic art. Could William Hogarth have
seen the works of Fuseli and Runciman, he would probably have had
something to say about _them_!

After a time, Runciman was again back at Penicuik. Perhaps his fervour
about his subject had a little cooled, or the incessant discussions in
regard to it had disturbed his faith. In fact the Ossian swindle was
getting to be, in common phrase, a little blown upon. His health was
failing him; his mode of life had never been very careful. He fell ill;
he neglected himself. He worked on steadily, but with a palpable failure
of heart in the business. He achieved his task. Yet the painting of the
great ceiling, to effect which he had to lie on his back in an almost
painful position, brought on an illness from which he never fairly
recovered. Some time he lingered, growing very pale and wan, and his
strength giving way until he could barely crawl about. On the 21st of
October 1785, he fell down dead at the door of his lodgings in West
Nicolson Street.

Four years more of life to Widow Hogarth--still, as ever, true to her
husband's memory and herself. Horace Walpole sought to buy forgiveness
for his attack on the 'Sigismunda,'--he had called it a 'maudlin fallen
virago'--by sending to the widow a copy of his 'Anecdotes;' but she took
no heed of him or his gift. Four years more, and then another interment
in the Chiswick sepulchre. The widow's earthly sorrows are at an end;
and beneath the name of 'William Hogarth, Esq.,' they now engrave on the
stone, 'Mistress Jane Hogarth, wife of William Hogarth, Esq. Obiit 13th
of November 1789. Ætat. 80 years.' In 1856, on the restoration of the
monument, which from the sinking of the earth threatened to fall in
pieces, the grave was opened, and there were seen the 'little' coffin of
the painter and the larger coffin of his widow. There too was seen,
literally, 'the hand' Johnson wrote of in his projected epitaph:--

    The hand of him here torpid lies,
      That drew the essential forms of grace;
    Here closed in death the attentive eyes,
      That saw the manners in the face.




ALLAN RAMSAY, JUNIOR.


Allan Ramsay, the author of the _Gentle Shepherd_,--'the best pastoral
that had ever been written,' said Mr. Boswell, whose judgments upon
poetry, however, are not final,--Allan Ramsay, the poet, father of Allan
Ramsay, principal painter to King George the Third, claimed descent from
the noble house of Dalhousie; he was the great-grandson of the laird of
Cockpen. His claim was admitted by the contemporary earl, who ever took
pride in recognising, as a relative, the 'restorer of Scottish national
poetry.' Certainly the poetical branch of the family tree had been in
some danger of being lost altogether--the clouds of obscurity had so
gathered round it--the sunshine of good fortune had so ceased to play
upon it. The laird's descendants appear to have been of the humblest
class, dwelling in a poor hamlet on the banks of the Glengoner, a
tributary of the Clyde among the hills between Clydesdale and Annandale.
The father of the Gentle Shepherd is said to have been a workman in
Lord Hopetoun's lead-mines, and the Gentle Shepherd himself, as a child,
employed as a washer of ore. Early in the last century he was in
Edinburgh, a barber's apprentice. In 1712 he married Christina Ross,
daughter of a legal practitioner in that city. In 1729 he had published
his comic pastoral, and was then in a bookseller's shop in the
Luckenbooths. Here he used to amuse Gay, famous for his Newgate
pastoral, with pointing out the chief characters and literati of the
city as they met daily in the forenoon at the Cross, according to
custom. Here Gay first read the _Gentle Shepherd_, and studied the
Scottish dialect, so that, on his return to England, he was able to
explain to Pope the peculiar merits of the poem. And the poets, Gay and
Ramsay, spent much time and emptied many glasses together at a twopenny
alehouse opposite Queensberry House, kept by one Janet Hall, called more
frequently Janet Ha'.

It was at Edinburgh that Allan Ramsay, junior, was born, the eldest of
seven children, in the year 1713. Late in life he was fond of
understating his age as people somehow _will_ do:

'I am old enough,' he said once, with the air of making a very frank
avowal, 'I am old enough to have been a contemporary of Pope.' Which was
not remarkable, considering that Pope did not die until 1744, when Mr.
Ramsay must have been thirty-one.

He had a natural talent for art. He began to sketch at twelve. But his
father was poor, with a large family to support,--it was not possible to
afford much of an education to the young artist. He had to develop his
abilities as he best could. In 1736, the father wrote of him thus simply
and tenderly: 'My son Allan has been pursuing his science since he was a
dozen years auld: was with Mr. Hyffidg, in London, for some time about
two years ago; has since been painting here like a Raphael; sets out for
the seat of the Beast beyond the Alps within a month hence to be away
two years. I am sweer' (_i.e._, loath) 'to part with him, but canna stem
the 'current which flows from the advice of his patrons and his own
inclinations.' This letter was addressed to one John Smybert, also a
self-taught artist. He had commenced in Edinburgh as a house-painter,
and, growing ambitious, found himself after a time in London, choosing
between starvation and the decoration of grand coach-panels in Long Acre
factories. In 1728 he settled in Boston, and shares with John Watson,
another Scotchman, who had preceded him some years, the honour of
founding painting as an art--from a European point of view--in the New
World.

Those who had hesitated in their patronage of the poet were not
disinclined to aid the painter. It is much less difficult a matter to
have one's portrait painted than to be able to appreciate a poem. Means
were forthcoming to enable the art-student to quit Edinburgh in 1736 for
Rome. He remained there during three years, receiving instruction from
Francesco Solimena, called also l'Abate Ciccio, and one Imperiali, an
artist of less fame. Of both it may be said, however, that they did
little enough to stay the downfall of Italian art.

On the return of Allan Ramsay, junior, to Scotland, we learn little more
of him than that he painted portraits of Duncan Forbes, of his own
sister, Miss Janet Ramsay, and Archibald, Duke of Argyle, in his robes
as Lord of Session. Finally he removed to London.

He was so fortunate as to find many valuable friends. The Earl of
Bridgewater was an early patron, followed by Lord Bute, whose powerful
position at court enabled him to introduce the painter to the
heir-apparent of the crown, Frederick, Prince of Wales. Two portraits of
His Royal Highness were commanded--full-length, and one remarkable for
being in profile. Still greater fame accrued to him, however, from his
portrait of Lord Bute, who was reputed to possess the handsomest leg in
England. His lordship was conscious of his advantage, and, during the
sitting to Ramsay for his whole-length portrait, engraved by Ryland, was
careful to hold up his robes considerably above his right knee, so that
his well-formed limbs should be thoroughly well exhibited; while, as
though to direct the attention of the spectator, with the forefinger of
his right hand he pointed down to his leg, and in this position remained
for an hour. The painter availed himself to the full of the opportunity,
and humoured the minister to the top of his bent. The picture was a
genuine triumph. Reynolds, never popular at court, grew jealous of his
rival's success, and alarmed lest it should lead to extraordinary
advancement. When the Marquis of Rockingham was posed before Sir Joshua
for the full-length picture, engraved by Fisher, the nobleman asked the
painter if he had not given a strut to the left leg. 'My lord,' replied
Sir Joshua with a smile, 'I wish to show a leg with Ramsay's Lord Bute.'

The painter prospered steadily, and, of course, was well abused; for
success is apt to bring with it envy and satire. Mr. William Hogarth,
who objected strongly to competitors, sought to jest down the advancing
Scotchman with a feeble pun about a Ram's eye! Hogarth was very much
less clever when he had a pen in his hand than when he was wielding a
brush or an etching needle.

The Reverend Charles Churchill, very angry with North Britons generally,
wrote sneering lines in the _Prophecy of Famine_:--

    Thence came the Ramsays, men of worthy note,
    Of whom one paints as well as t'other wrote.

By-and-by these two critics forgot Ramsay, however, they were so busy
with each other, bandying abuse and interchanging mud. The court painter
heeded little their comments. He was putting money in his purse. There
were always sitters in his studio: he had as much work as he could do;
while yet he found time for self-cultivation. He must have possessed an
active restless mind. He was not content with being merely a clever,
hard-working, money-making painter. Even at Rome he had studied other
things beside art. As Mr. Fuseli states magniloquently, after his
manner, 'he was smit with the love of classic lore, and desired to
trace, on dubious vestiges, the haunts of ancient genius and learning.'
He made himself a good Latin, French, and Italian scholar; indeed, he is
said to have mastered most of the modern European languages, with the
exception of Russian. His German he found of no slight service to him in
the court of the Guelphs. Later in life he studied Greek, and acquitted
himself as a commendable scholar.

Artists, less accomplished, were inclined to charge him with being above
his business, and more anxious to be accounted a person of taste and
learning than to be valued as a painter. Just as Congreve disclaimed the
character of a poet, declaring he had written plays but for pastime, and
begged he might be considered merely as a gentleman. There was no one to
say to Ramsay, however, as Voltaire--nothing, if not literary--said to
Congreve, 'If you had been merely a gentleman, I should not have come to
see you.' On the contrary, the world in general applauded Ramsay for
qualities quite apart from professional merits.

'I love Ramsay,' said Samuel Johnson to his biographer. 'You will not
find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more
information, and more elegance than in Ramsay's.'

Perhaps it may be noted that this remark of the Doctor's upon his friend
follows curiously close upon his satisfactory comment upon an
entertainment at the house of the painter.

'Well, sir, Ramsay gave us a splendid dinner!'

'What I admire in Ramsay,' says Mr. Boswell, 'is his continuing to be so
young!'

Johnson concedes: 'Why, yes, sir, it is to be admired. I value myself
upon this, that there is nothing of the old man in my conversation. I am
now sixty-eight, and I have no more of it than at twenty-eight.' And the
good Doctor runs on rather garrulously, it must be owned, ending
with--'I think myself a very polite man!'

It was to Mr. Ramsay's house--No. 67 Harley Street--that Mr. Boswell
sent a letter for his friend: 'My dear sir,--I am in great pain with an
inflamed foot' (why not have said plainly 'the gout,' Mr. Boswell?) 'and
obliged to keep my bed, so I am prevented from having the pleasure to
dine at Mr. Ramsay's to-day, which is very hard, and my spirits are
sadly sunk. Will you be so friendly as to come and sit an hour with me
in the evening?'

And it was from Ramsay's house the kind old man despatched his rather
stiff reply: 'Mr. Johnson laments the absence of Mr. Boswell, and will
come to him.'

After dinner the Doctor goes round to the invalid, laid up in General
Paoli's house in South Audley Street, and brings with him Sir Joshua
Reynolds, whom it is pleasant to find is a frequent guest at his great
rival's hospitable board.

Ramsay prospers--his reputation increases--he is largely employed, not
only in portraiture, but in decorating walls and ceilings. He has a
staff of workmen under him. A second time he visits Rome, making a stay
of some months; and journeys to Edinburgh, residing there long enough to
establish, in 1754, 'The Select Society.' He grows wealthy too. Poor
Allan Ramsay, senior, dies much in debt in 1757; the painter takes upon
himself his father's liabilities, and pensions his unmarried sister,
Janet Ramsay, who survived to 1804. He is possessed, it is said, of an
independent fortune to the amount of £40,000; and this before the
accession of King George the Third, and his extraordinary patronage of
the painter.

The office of painter to the crown was one of early date. In 1550
Antonio More was painter to Queen Mary. For his portrait of the Queen
sent to Philip of Spain, he was rewarded with one hundred pounds, a gold
chain, and a salary of one hundred pounds a quarter as court-painter to
their Majesties. There is some obscurity about the appointments of
painters to the king during the reign of George the Second. Jervas was
succeeded by Kent, who died in 1748. Shackleton succeeded Kent. Yet it
is probable that the king had more than one painter at the same time.
For we find Hogarth, who is said to have succeeded his brother-in-law,
John Thornhill,[13] the son of Sir James, appointed in 1757, while Mr.
Shackleton did not die until 1767, when, as Mr. Cunningham relates the
story of the London studios, he died of a broken heart on learning that
Ramsay was appointed in his stead to be painter to George III. This was
certainly about the date of Ramsay's appointment. And now there grew to
be quite a rage for portraits by Ramsay--there was a run upon him as
though he had been a sinking bank. He was compelled to call in the aid
of all sorts of people, painting the heads only of his sitters with his
own hand; and at last abandoning even much of that superior work to his
favourite pupil, Philip Reinagle. So that in many of Ramsay's pictures
there is probably but a very few strokes of Ramsay's brush. The names of
certain of his assistants have been recorded. Mrs. Black, 'a lady of
less talent than good taste.' Vandyck, a Dutchman, allied more in name
than in talent with him of the days of Charles the First. Eikart, a
German, clever at draperies. Roth, another German, who aided in the
subordinate parts of the work. Vesperis, an Italian, who was employed
occasionally to paint fruits and flowers. And Davie Martin, a Scotchman,
a favourite draughtsman and helper, and conscientious servant. Mr.
Reinagle probably furnished Mr. Cunningham with these particulars. It
will be noted that the English artist's employment of foreign
mercenaries was considerable. This must have been either from the fact
of such assistance being procurable at a cheaper rate, or that the old
notion still prevailed as to the necessity of looking abroad for
art-talent.

[13] Concerning the merits and career of John Thornhill, biography has
been curiously silent.

Ramsay succeeded at Court. He was made of more yielding materials than
Reynolds; assumed more the airs of a courtier--humoured the king.
Perhaps like Sir Pertinax he had a theory upon the successful results of
'booing and booing.' He never contradicted; always smiled acquiescence;
listened complacently to the most absurd opinions upon art of his royal
master. Reynolds was bent upon asserting the dignity of his profession.
He did not stoop to conceal his appreciation of the fact that as a
painter at any rate he was the sovereign's superior--he _would_ be, to
use a popular phrase, 'cock on his own dunghill.' When the painter's
friends spoke on the subject to Johnson, he said stoutly 'That the
neglect could never prejudice him: but it would reflect _eternal
disgrace_ on the king not to have employed Sir Joshua.' But Reynolds
received only one royal commission: to paint the king and queen,
whole-lengths, for the council-room of the Royal Academy, 'two of the
finest portraits in the world,' as Northcote declared. The king, who was
an early riser, sat at ten in the morning. The entry in Reynolds'
pocket-book is 'Friday, May 21 (1779), at 10--the king.' The queen's
name does not occur until December. The king, who was near-sighted, and
looked close at a picture, always complained that Reynolds' paintings
were rough and unfinished. But Reynolds heeded not. Be sure Ramsay and
West were careful to paint smoothly enough after that. Northcote said
that the balance of greatness preponderated on the side of the subject,
and the king was annoyed at perceiving it; and disliked extremely the
ease and independence of manner of Reynolds--always courteous, yet
always unembarrassed--proceeding with his likenesses as though he were
copying marble statues. 'Do not suppose,' adds his pupil, 'that he was
ignorant of the value of royal favour. No. Reynolds had a thorough
knowledge of the world; he would have gladly possessed it, but the price
would have cost him too much.'

The court-painter had soon enough to do, for the king had a habit of
presenting portraits of himself and his queen to all his ambassadors and
colonial governors. He sat, too, for his coronation portrait, as it was
called, in Buckingham Palace. The bland, obsequious, well-informed
Ramsay became a great favourite. He always gave way to the king--would
have sacrificed his art to his advancement any day. And he was almost
the only person about the Court, except the servants, who could speak
German, and the queen was especially fond of chatting with him in her
native language. Their Majesties soon gave over being dignified. Indeed,
few persons were more prone to forget their grandeur, although they did
not like anybody else to do so. With his own hands the king would help
West to place his pictures in position on the easel. The queen--plain,
snuff-taking, her face painted like a mask, and her eyes rolling like an
automaton, as eyewitnesses have described her later in life--called on
Mrs. Garrick one day at Hampton Court, and found the widow of the
Roscius very busy peeling onions for pickling. 'The queen, however,
would not suffer her to stir, but commanded a knife to be brought,
observing that she would peel an onion with her, and actually sat down
in the most condescending manner and peeled onions.' The king,
interrupting his sittings to dine off his favourite boiled mutton and
turnips, would make Ramsay bring easel and canvas into the dining-room,
so that they might continue their conversation during the royal meal.
When the king had finished, he would rise and say, 'Now, Ramsay, sit
down in my place and take your dinner.' When he was engaged on his first
portrait of the queen, it is recorded that all the crown jewels and the
regalia were sent to him. The painter observed that jewels and gold of
so great a value deserved a guard, and accordingly sentinels were posted
day and night in front and rear of his house. His studio was composed of
a set of rooms and haylofts in the mews at the back of Harley Street,
all thrown into one long gallery.

Peter Pindar, in his 'Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians for 1782,'
writes:--

      'I've heard that Ramsay when he died,
    Left just nine rooms well stuffed with Queens and Kings,
      From whence all nations might have been supplied
          That longed for valuable things.
      Viceroys, ambassadors, and plenipos,
      Bought them to join their raree-shows
              In foreign parts;
      And show the progress of the British arts.
      Whether they purchased by the pound or yard,
      I cannot tell because I never heard:
      But this I know--his shop was like a fair,
      And dealt most largely in this ROYAL WARE.
      See what it is to gain a monarch's smile,
      And hast thou missed it, REYNOLDS, all this while?
      How stupid! Pray thee seek the courtiers' school,
      And learn to manufacture _oil of fool_.'

According to Dr. Walcot, King George the Third sat to Mr. Dance in
preference to Reynolds as a matter of economy. Dance charged fifty
pounds for a picture. Sir Joshua's price was over a hundred. The king
decided upon patronizing the painter whose charge was the lower. Pindar
says:--

    'Thank God! that monarchs cannot taste control,
    And make each subject's poor submissive soul
    Admire the works that judgment oft cries fie on!
        Had things been so, poor REYNOLDS we had seen
        Painting a barber's pole, an ale-house queen,
    The Cat and Gridiron or the Old Red Lion;
    At Plympton, perhaps, for some grave Doctor Slop
    Painting the pots and bottles of the shop;
    Or in the drama to get meat to munch,
    His brush divine had pictured scenes for Punch;
    While WEST was whelping 'midst his paints
    Moses and Aaron, and all sorts of saints,
    Adams, and Eves, and snakes, and apples;
    And devils, for beautifying certain chapels;
    But REYNOLDS is no favourite, that's the matter,
    He has not learnt the noble art to flatter.'

The doctor was never weary of launching his satirical shafts at the
king. It has been suggested, however, that political consi

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/20237